Clayton Bigsby posted:

Pay attention to the things in the picture *other* than the subject, for one. Not having seen any of your work I can't really say whether this is a problem, but it's something I frequently see plaguing new shooters. They tend to focus too much on the subject they have in mind, and fail to notice unappealing/distracting elements in the image that end up ruining it. E.g. nice shot of a cute girl but oops, there's a big plastic "Waste Pro" garbage bin to the left of and behind her.

Also, a lot of people try and fail to convey something they think is grand. For instance, you might be out walking in the woods and get overwhelmed by all the large trees, the feeling of being so small in nature, yada yada... so you take a nice wide angle picture. You end up with a picture of a bunch of tree branches and ground littered with debris. Yay.

Take some of your shots and look at them carefully. What were you TRYING to convey in them? How did you fail to? Did the light on a person's face not come out like you thought? Is the person not as "living" in the image as you hoped for? That sort of thing. And post and ask for honest critique, we have threads for that here.