The gap is normal and it narrows slowly
One contributor described exactly this ambition — having learned to recognise a good photograph, simply stop taking the bad ones — and reported it not working that way. Their ratio improved quickly at first as exposure and composition became reliable, and then improved very slowly afterwards. That shape is worth knowing in advance, because the slow part is where people conclude they have stopped improving.
The specific failures people named
- Including too much. One answer diagnosed the habit of keeping irrelevant area in the frame because it contains some nice detail — described memorably as too much land and not enough sky.
- Hedging between two ideas. Another likened it to standing with one foot on a boat and one on the dock: a frame trying to be about two things at once commits to neither and comes out bland.
- Not committing physically. The same answer's fix was to get down on knees and elbows and be close to the thing the picture is supposedly about.
- Leaving the picture unfinished. One reply argued the posted example had a good sky hidden in blown highlights, and that the frame had not been taken as far as it could go.
Why it happens in the moment
Nothing in the thread suggested the answer is more knowledge. The recurring implication is that in front of a scene you are responding to being there — the light, the scale, the fact that something caught your attention — while on the screen afterwards you see only what the frame contains. The judgement that feels effortless later is being made on much less information than the judgement you have to make at the time.
What actually helps
- Volume, deliberately. Every answer that gave a method described shooting a great deal and reviewing honestly.
- Naming the subject before the shutter, so you have a question to check the frame against.
- Working the scene rather than taking one frame: closer, lower, tighter, and comparing afterwards.
- Finishing the promising ones properly, since some frames only become good in the edit.