Photography is all about light. Direction, color, hardness, it's all about light. To control what happens in your photograph you must control the light. What does that mean? Let's look at some examples of where light used well makes for some great photographs.
Assignment: What did the artists below do to get these photos? Do you think they were just lucky or was it technique? What kind of planning does it take to create photographs like these?
Look at some of the photos but save some time to explore Flickr's light clusters:Light || Shadow, Sun & Reflection || Silhouette || Backlit
This image from Barbara Fischer's Flickr stream uses backlight to bring out color and texture of the leaf.
Backlight acts to frame the image with light and creates sharp definitions of interest within the photograph. Take a look at the backlight pool on flickr for more examples.
The images and articles on PhotoK12.org are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 License. -->
The Panasonic Lumix FZ5 has a lot to like but its best feature is its optically stabilized, 12x zoom lens. Optical stabilization helps with the #1 problem photographers have, camera shake. Without a tripod, it's hard to hold a camera still for tack sharp photographs. This is especially true in low-light situations like when shooting indoors. The lens of the FZ5 has computer controled sensors that will lock on to the subject and compensate for camera movement. The result is often amazing and usually the difference between getting a good shot and just wasting your time. The lens also has a wide aperture throughout all of its zoom range (12x) which is a bonus.
It's not PhotoShop but then again, it doesn't cost several hundred dollars. It's free software and it's a great image editor. GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. 
Sharbat Gula, an Afghan woman who became famous as a cover photograph on a 1985 issue of National Geographic magazine.