I am also an aspiring photographer. I would consider my style to be a mixture of travel and documentary photography, for the most part I prefer to study National Geographic photographers. I also try to study the older generations of master photographers. I would recommend that you study photographers who's style fits yours. For cameras I would recommend that you look at Canon, Nikon and Sony for a professional quality camera. For software, I recommend Adobe Photoshop Lightrom, as is the preferred editing program that is used by the majority of photographers, I also recommend that you also have a cataloging program such as Microsoft Expressions media.