There has been some good advice here and some...well advice.
I used to do surf photography here in Florida and made enough to pay my rent at the beach and it was only a part-time job for me!

Sure you can start out with a digital camera, but use it to learn with for compostion...That means the way things are placed in the image. It is more commonly refered to as the 1/3 rule.
Take photo courses at beginner level and work your way thru the advanced courses. Then go to a private photo studio and offer your help for free, it is a common practice. You will be setting up backgrounds, lights, etc. and doing all of the "gopher" work. Listen and learn from a pro after you finish all the schooling you can take. He or she will tell you to do things they didn't teach at school.
BTW some classes want you to use 35mm only, because they will teach you developing procedures also. Do it. it will be very handy.

After you get more knowledge, get a medium format camera. they use 120 or 220 roll film. The negatives are bigger and when you do enlargements you don't see any grain, even if you do a wall sized enlargement. Be prepared for sticker shock when you buy one of them, they are $1500.00 for the body and that is the cheap ones. The lenses are extra and you need good ones, preferably Zeis...Planar...Heidomat. Expect to pay another grand for a single use lens such as 250mm for nature photos. You can get good results with 35mm cameras and a good 500mm lens so you can save some money if need be.

Magazines prefer slides, not negatives but you are several years from that stage unless you get lucky on a photo shoot, it can happen, one of my photos made a surf magazine once. it paid $25.00 and got my name as a photographer which helped me have the opportunity to do more private shoots at $200.00 and all they got were at least 40 4x6 pictures and the opportunity to buy enlargements. The most I made from an enlargement was 200 bucks.

There is money to be made, You just got to treat it as an education sorta like college. Expect to take at least 100 photos per one great one. and that is after you get the experience you need.


Good luck!