>>2637049read everything that interests you.
The photographers handbook is a great place to start with the technical side. Then read whatever takes your fancy, photo books from artists you admire, books that focus around composition and chiaroscuro in painting, biographies from photographers that describe their thought patterns, goals and motives.
Literally anything that can either increase your theory or your motivation. If anything stay away from books like "How to use your Nikon D3100 for stunning pet photography". There is only and there has only ever been 4 variables in photography, focal length, aperture, shutter speed and iso - master all 4 and the relationships between them and taking any photo of any subject with any camera will be second nature.
>would a battery grip on a d5100 and the 55-300 work?That will make you look like you're fresh out of best buy, but it doesn't make much difference because photography is about the images you produce, not the image you portray.
>>2637034Would you say that if I wanted to learn to play the guitar a sensible approach would be to randomly pluck strings and listen to shit posted on /mu until I believed I was doing the right thing? Of course not, you buy a "lets learn guitar" book, you pay a greasy haired youth $20 to teach you, you learn music notation and you work out your song note by note always following the example.
The greatest downfall of photography is that anyone can taste success with a lucky push of a button. To continually produce high quality images that you and others want to look at again and again takes years of practice, just like any other art.
