This is something i've kind of wanted to get into since I was 14, how would I as a 16 year old be recommended to start into this?
Shuffler offered sound advice take it.
I would add this; Remember that there is basically 2 sides to photography, the technology/gear side and the artistic side. To be a good photographer you need to do well at both. For example you could have the greatest gear in the world, and a great artistic eye, but if you don't know how to get the most out of that gear you will never reach it's potential. The flip side is having great gear and knowing how to use it, but having no artistic talent at all.
What I see a lot of is people with great gear, who don't know how to use it, and have not artistic talent. Like the mom I saw at a soccer game I was photographing for a team last fall. She had a Canon 7D, with a 70-200mm f2.8 "L" lens. (arguably better gear then the A700 and Minolta 80-200mm f2.8 I was using) After I had photographed the game and done team/individual pictures she comes up and asks me "Can you tell me what all these buttons and dials do?" and "How come my pictures are all blurry?" Apparently her husband bought it for her, because she wanted to photograph her girls sports, and he read on the internet that it was the best. She had no clue and was just flipping to random settings hoping to find what worked. To make matters worse her composition was horrible too. I took her camera and set it to aperture priority at f4, auto ISO, continuous AF and just told here to leave it there.
In general most photographers are not limited by their equipment but by their own talent. That's why like Shuffler said, start with a simple, cheapish camera (you can pick up second hand film SLRs for well under $100, or even 1st get digital SlRs for not much more, lenses too). When your skills reach the point where your equipment is holding you back, you will know it, and by then you will be knowledgeable enough to know what kind of equipment you need for the kind of work you do.
For the technology side of photography the best online resource I've found is this website
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/ go there and start with reading all of their "photo essentials" tutorials. It will help you understand what all the knobs and buttons do, and how they effect the photograph.
For the gear side, find a forum that is specific to the brand you choose.
For the Artistic side, it's mostly just a whole lot of trial and error, you can also browse online photo sharing sites like flickr, smugmug, photosig, dpreview etc.. to get ideas. I find looking at the work of others that I like, gets my own creative juices flowing. There are some basics like leading lines and rule of thirds, framing and so forth, but you can't learn it from a book I feel. Some people have a natural knack for composition, posing etc., others don't. But even if you don't, you can still develop it I believe, you just have to work harder.
As a side note, for wildlife photography like I do, there is another important aspect as well, and that is biology. You can't photograph wildlife if you don't know where and when to find it. Oh and patience, lots and lots of patience.
I've let my own website languish without updates for the past 2 years (been to busy with school and work) but if you want to see a small sampling of my work you can check it out here
www.kirksagers.com hopefully sometime this year I will revamp my website and add a LOT more content.
