If you've been doing photography for a bit, you know that getting better doesn't happen automatically. Like anything worth doing, it takes practice. Getting your shutter count up there is just the beginning. You have to want to get better, which may sound obvious, like don't we all want to get better? Maybe, but what happens when it doesn't come easily, or we just feel stuck? Becoming self-critical in a useful way can be challenging, and perhaps you do photography to balance other things in your life that are not so fun. Definitely nothing wrong with just having fun, but maybe you can expand the fun stuff and improve on your own terms.
Here are a few things I do. Taking lots of photos is good practice, but don't forget the rest of the process. Develop (whatever that means to you), Edit, Share and Look. I try to look at all kinds of work, artworks I like, artworks I don't get, movies, everything. I look at photography, but not just photography, and not just what is happening on social media. I love seeing photography in physical forms: projected film, photo prints, and photobooks. I love books, and so I gravitate to them, to look at and to make.
It's hard to edit work if you don't know what it's about, and here's a thing that seems crazy, but just because you made a picture doesn't mean that you understand it. This is definitely something I've found to be so: All of the thoughts, feelings, memories that accompany each photo I make aren't actually available to the person viewing it when that person isn't me. What's more, viewers have their own thoughts, feelings, and memories that even I don't know. Wild.
So to help myself bridge that divide, I print stuff and keep it around me. If you are picturing a hoarder surrounded by stacks of old newspapers right now, I'm sorry. It isn't quite that bad yet. It's great to have stuff on hand, so you see it when you aren't necessarily thinking about it. You live with it, in other words, and in doing so, you move yourself a little closer to seeing it the way someone else might. Seeing a picture in the context of other pictures suggests connections, and for someone who likes to gather images into books, those connections can be catalyzing. I print single photos, and I print little books too. Happily, there are many tools available to make that relatively easy.
Digital forms have their place in this for me, too. Certainly for sharing, but as a further extension of my own self-review, I find it very useful. For example, I've added a new page to this site collecting a number of my photo walks, and in doing so, I've found some commonalities that I had missed. To that end, I'm presenting a less edited (or redacted) group that shows a bit of the exploration that goes on for me instead of making a single, final choice. Doing so gives me this fun little grid of this vine monster:
What a beast.
When all else fails, read a book. I'd love to hear about your own strategies. And if you're looking around this site and thinking, "it ain't working, chief,” you're not alone; I think that often myself. But that's what getting better is all about, right?