Not only peruse here, looking through the galleries (from specific software - Poser, 3DS Max, Cinema 4D, etc. - to genres - Realism, Fractal, Atmosphere, Fantasy, etc.), lurking the forums, but go outside the site as well - I'd suggest going to your nearest large bookstore and grabbing copies of 3D World and 3D Artist magazines, as well as HDRI 3D.

Once you start figuring out what's what, tools most often used for whatever you're looking to do (this alone is so wide open a topic - I think you should look around and figure out what directly interests you.

Once you've got a discernible direction and realize you specifically need to learn THIS to go forward, I'd suggest checking out thegnomonworkshop.com (actually ore professional level training) and geekatplay.com - while the latter is mostly Vue related, they have a handful in Poser to Cinema 4D to Modo.

I hope this helps - good luck and welcome to the awesome world of CG!

-Lew