Your lens is an 18-55mm lens, though on a digital camera the sensor is smaller so it will be I think around a 33-70mm equivalent (i.e. the photos you take will be cropped to the equivalent to what would be taken if it were a photo taken on a film SLR with a lens of 33-70mm ). And the hoya uv, is that your filter?
Having an 18-55mm lens means it is a rather wide angle lens, which is good for landscape. If you also invested in a lens with a maximum of 200 or 300mm you’d be pretty set for amateur photography (though you’ll still be fine with what you have, you’ll just have to get closer to things to take photos of them).

A good way to learn photography without having to spend money is to go to the library and borrow a heap of books about photography.
It can be a bit technical at first, having to get the different settings right for the photograph you are trying to take (low light, close up, landscape, portraits, critters, etc.)/
You can start by leaving your camera on auto, or if it’s like my camera, you can have full auto, auto focus/manual exposure/aperture, manual focus/manual exposure, etc. Then when you upload photos onto your computer, right click the photo, go into Properties, and it will tell you all the details of the photo, and you can learn what exposures and apertures worked best.

For photos with a very narrow depth of field (very little in focus), you will need a wide aperture (for example f1.8). The wider the aperture, the narrower the depth of field. Different lenses will have different apertures. Remember that the wider the aperture, the more light will be allowed into the lens, and the smaller the aperture, the less light.
Think of it sort of like your eye, when it’s really bright outside, the pupil will become smaller to allow less light in, therefore fixing the ‘exposure’ of what you are seeing so that things aren’t too bright. When it’s darker they widen to allow more light in so that you can see better in the dark.
The exposure is basically how quick the shutter is open for. There is a ‘rule’ that photos slower than 1/60 sec generally need a tripod because taking a photo hand held at that exposure has more chance of being blurry.
So when adjusting the settings manually, you will need to take into account both the shutter speed and the aperture so that photos aren’t over or under exposed.
An example of why it matters. Say you wanted to take a photo of a street, and you wanted everything to be clear, but you wanted the effect of movement by having the cars driving down the street blurry in the photos. To do this you will need a slower shutter speed. But having a slower shutter speed means the picture will be exposed to light for a longer period of time, creating the risk of over exposure. So to fix that you will need to use an aperture that is smaller (e.g. f6) which will allow less light into the lens. There is a difference between the amount of TIME the light is exposed (shutter speed) and HOW MUCH light is exposed (aperture).



This photo was taken with an aperture of f1.8, which is a very wide aperture, and an exposure of 1/500 sec, which is a very quick exposure. It was in the shade, but the aperture was very wide so it wasn’t under exposed with the fast shutter. Being a close up with a very wide aperture, you can see the depth of field is extremely narrow, only the very centre of the flower is in focus.



This photo was taken in sunny conditions, with the same shutter speed of 1/500 sec,, but with an aperture of f5.6
Photos of things that constantly move, like a bee, just keep taking photos. If you take one photo, or 5 photos, chances are they may all be blurry. Set your camera to multi exposure (mine can take up to 3 photos per second, depending on the exposure time), and just hold the button down. Even if you take 30 photos, you have more chance of one of them turning out well. Also, cropping can help quite a lot, this picture was cropped down to less than a quarter of its original size.

If you have a filter, which it sounds like you do, you can use it to add more contrast to brighter conditions (the beach or a lot of sky), it will remove a lot of glare from highly reflective surfaces like water and windows (filters also work well for moving water like waterfalls), and adding a bit of saturation to photos. All this will depend on the type and grade o filter you have

Here’s an example of what a polarising filter can do-



The first picture is a photo taken without the filter, with an aperture of f5.6, an ISO of 400 and an exposure of 1/200 sec.. The second photo is taken with exactly the same settings, the only difference being that it has the filter. You can see more saturated colour, more contrast in the sky, the clouds and the shadows on the grass are more visible. Filters are good for brighter conditions like the beach, sky and flower photography on sunny days, and to create more contrast in landscape photography.

Black and white/sepia photography can’t go wrong either. It takes all the focus away from the colour so the only thing you can focus on is the picture itself, the contrasts and shapes-



When taking photos of specific things like people or objects, try placing them off centre-



It looks a lot better than if they are central in the picture.

You can also try different effects with your camera.
This picture was taken by turning the camera as the photo was being taken on a slower shutter speed of 1/13sec and an aperture of f6-

This photo was taken on a very slow shutter speed of 6.5 seconds and an aperture of f6.4-



And when you take pictures, don’t just stand there and take a picture, try different angles, or try getting down to the subjects level-




Anyway, if you haven’t fallen asleep yet, I hope that all made sense and was at least a little bit helpful.