Hi @dtheory27, welcome to Steemit! :-)
For advice, I would suggest at first mostly read other people's posts, write thoughtful comments, vote, follow people who you like. And yes, sharing photos is a good idea. You may not get many votes for them initially, but over time if you do those other things, you should gather followers and start getting votes/rewards for your content.
Thank you. I'll take your advice.
I read that voting decreases your voting influence. What's up with that?
It recovers fairly quickly. It's like a mana/energy bar in a computer game. If your voting power wasn't finite in some way, you could use an automated script to give yourself unlimited influence, and that wouldn't be fair to other users.