My most important advice, try demos before purchasing anything. The cost of software may largely exceed the costs of your computer. For photography, you could also consider Photoshop Elements, which has about 90% of the features of Photoshop for about 10% of its price. If you're interested in digital painting you should try Painter Classic, which comes free with most tablets and if you like it you can always move to the full-fledged Painter. For virtual landscapes there are Vue and Bryce, both with their pros and cons. Beware though that these are scene builders - renderers, not actual modelling programs. As for modelling there is a vast choice of freeware (Wings, Blender), shareware (Silo), entry level (Amapi, Carrara) as well as high end (Cinema, Rhino, Max, Lightwave and Maya) and even for the latter there are differences, Cinema often being considered as the poor man's Maya. Best go through the different galleries and see what people are making with their tools. And if you see something you like, try a demo. Alternatively, keep an eye on the cover CDs of Computer Arts Magazine, 3D World magazine, etc., since very often they are allowed to distribute older full versions of high end software for free. Oh, and welcome to the club :-)

http://www.roobol.be