Photography

Of course there are many things required of a good photographer.  Here are a few to start with:

1)  Get the best equipment you can afford and know how to us it.  Some things are essential to improve your chances of taking that perfect photograph.  The two most important are: manual focus and manual exposure control.  Too often you are faced with high contrast scenes that simply cannot be addressed by the auto settings on most cameras.  A zoom lens also helps a lot but be careful that it is a good one.  Poor ones can have bad lens flare and also have fuzzy focus around the edges of your picture.
2)  Travel to pretty places and or photograph interesting subjects and take lots of pictures.  Find your niche.  Some photographers are good with people.  Others good with scenery.  One of my niches is to take pictures that are 3-D in appearance even though the medium is 2-D.  But USE your camera, TAKE pictures, and LEARN from what you experience. 
3)  If you want to make money from photography accept that it might be taking pictures of things that are not interesting to you - like food (for advertisements) or house interiors (for real estate agents).  Not everyone can be an adventure photographer.  So keep an open mind.