Why do my photos suck?

Thanks for sharing, Peter. Often go out with the intent of being more thoughtful but too often end up taking too many pictures and hoping something will work. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever get it.

That applies to me in a very round-about way.....

Just this past week, camera laying on a table inside the house......, I am outside feeding the horse while a crowd of crows are pitching a very noisy fit; then a big shadow crosses over me and I look up to see what is probably by far the biggest hawk that I have ever seen in my life with three huge crows attacking him like WWI dog-fighters and all the rest of the crows waiting to step in whenever one of the dog-fighters gets tired or killed.
Before I could have ran inside and came back with a camera, they had taken their airborne fight over the top of our woods and out of sight.

That night, just a bit before too dark to see, with an impending monsoon moving in, I happened to remember that the battery charger was connected to the tractor; I went outside, stepped off the porch, began disconnecting the charger, and looked across the hood of the tractor right in a deer's eyes, about thirty feet from me.
I kept up a low friendly conversation with that deer while another one came out of the shadows to join her, then two more, then a young buck, then another, six in all right there in front of me; the camera may as well have been on the moon.

The next evening, I was standing in a cedar thicket, investigating whether a fallen tree had knocked down the fence or not, when I saw another deer meandering around in the open field just the other side of the fence, aimlessly heading toward the fence-corner where I was; this one just about half-grown.
I stood real still and quiet and that deer walked through the tight six-strand barb-wire fence as though it weren't even there; he didn't even get a prick nor leave a hair in the barbs, just stepped between the wires as though they weren't even there..........., and as close to me that I could have patted him on the head.

After that, I decided that we must be infested with deer; so, for the next three evenings, I hung the camera around my neck, silently slipped into a good vantage spot, and watched and waited, all eyes and ears, from about 3:PM until too dark to see; I nearly froze my nose off and all I saw for my troubles was one old yellar stray cat.

I won't go into all the details; but, also during the past week, I got a real good look at a red-headed woodpecker; and, last night, I went to toss some table scraps into the woods and nearly stepped into the middle of a fight between two possums and another old stray cat, this one black-and-white.

I have decided that the best way to see lots of photographic opportunities is to not have a camera handy.

Thanks for sharing Peter. That was informative and helpful.

There is countless truckloads of information on the www on how to improve your images.

This is another video I find very informative and helpful. It's a bit long, but covers a very wide range of situations with examples.

The intro to the video is:

Watched this in half-hour chunks today. My favorite example was the ship abstract. I am finding that I am frequently drawn to pictures shot from a low or high vantage point and am trying to be more aware of this in my own photography. I don't think I will ever tire of a good review of the basics.