My advice to young filmmakers is to make a movie every week in Super 8 or hi-def, write every night, and every weekend, shoot for two days. Work with actors. Work with a little 1000 watt lighting kit. Set it up, set up your shots, get a tripod. Shoot a little scene. Work with the actors. Cut those scenes together, and then the next weekend, have worked on it with sound and looping and put some music to it — it can all be done for nothing nowadays with a computer.
And get a response. Get a response from the audience, and see where it’s slow, and where it doesn’t work, and where your ideas weren’t being communicated properly. Learn from that experience sitting in with a crowd, then go out and make another picture the next weekend. Just keep doing it.Make films, no matter what anybody says, and you’ll be a filmmaker.
Sam Raimi
If you’re a beginner at photography, but too embarrassed to admit it, I know the feeling. I’m definitely not the most mechanically savvy person in the world when it comes to cameras (which I’ve found to be problematic when I get hired to do professional shoots.) But luckily there’s a website for those of us who are camerachanically challenged (camera + mechanically = camerachanically — probably the best word I’ve ever made up.) Canon has introduced a virtual DSLR website, a camera simulator called Outside of Auto, aimed at helping newbies learn the basics by taking them off autopilot and putting their hands on the controls. 
