I am not sure what level you are regarding Maya but if you are just starting out I would suggest working through all the tutorials in the help files ( F1) and this should give you a basic grasp of the interface, also there are some free beginners tutorial here for downlown.
With regards to where you go from there well it really depends on what you want to achieve with Maya in the sense that i mean do you want to animate or do you want to just create a still shot to composite in your photography ? or are you intrested in dynamics ect ?
Learning to model and texture in Maya I would say would be your first step but as for more advanced operations, once you have decided where you are going with Maya you will then know what else you might want to learn i.e rigging ect.
Hope this helps a little.
regards J.S.
2 x Modeling Challenge Winner