Advice for young photographers? Take some classes. There's a lot of technical stuff you need to know. No sense wasting your time reinventing the wheel when somebody else has already done it and can teach it to you in a tenth the time. I wouldn't put too much stock in what photography teachers have to say about esthetics, though, unless you really, really admire their work. Just learn technique. Then go take a couple of art history classes, and a drawing class; learn your esthetics from Michelangelo and Picasso, not some guy with a camera down at the local community college.