I am pretty simple, and do not know of a lot people in photography (art's or otherwise). So this is an interesting thread if you can get people to participate. Anyway, here is my story.

After I got my first DSLR (xTi) and had it for a while I started to think I was doing pretty good with it. Then I saw this guys pictures on Flickr. Many of his shots were from areas that I knew and shot myself, but his pictures were way beyond what I was doing. The skies in his shots were always very colorful - his subjects were not only interesting, but he always puts something interesting in the forground as well. So looking through his pictures on flickr made me realize I had a long ways to go. But I really liked his style, so I looked at what he did and looked at others pictures to see what I had to work on. So what have I learned so far: This hoby requires that you to continually learn what works and what does not. That is what keeps it interesting, and what consumes so much of my free time.

The guy was Richard Thompson's, and below is the link to his flickr account. It may not be particularly interesting if you do not like landscape, but I found it interesting especially because his subjects were familar to me:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardthompson/