A good way to open the door is to pay for the privilege. Find a pro that you respect that offers lessons. Pay for a few lessons, improve your skills, find your style and doors may start to open. Just like we all like to invest in glass, invest in lessons in your passion. The more you do that the more credibility you will earn and you may start getting invited on shoots. Of course this is more likely if you are shooting landscape, not shooting super models on closed sets, but you never know your luck.
There are some great pros that publish their work on Flickr and have blog sites describing their shoots and plenty of people that develop relationships through those sites and share tips and insights and eventually work together. Even the dreaded Facebook helps a lot of passionate photogs to get their start.
You will stand out by how much you are prepared to sacrifice to make it happen. By sacrifice, I mean time and dedication.
Good luck.