With photography, as with movies, you have to distinguish between the level of skill of the photographical technique, and the content.
One problem with focus on technique is that people forget about the value of the content. There is a saying that this generation's content is last generation's context. It is a bad mistake to confuse the framing for the picture.
In your case there are three issues of focus: technique, content, art.
The reason we like your pictures is because of the content, the story line - we are transported to a place we have never been, and looking through the eyes of a person we know.
Technique is something you are developing, and has to do with camera skills. That is what you will find comments on from others in that profession which the rest of us wouldn't know.
The area you need to develop is your artistic eye. This is something you will rarely find from other photographers - you have to learn it from artists and from evolving your own unique voice. It comes with age and imagination - experience and reflection.
I have a friend who is an artistic photographer, and he bemoans the level of artistic sensitivity in the profession, because it is so technique intensive. The same is true of the music profession.
But in the end, I am much more interested in content.
I was visiting a friend of mine on Sunday who is a very highly acclaimed artist, and we were looking at her latest material - it was stunning. I asked her if she did other things like music and writing. She replied that she feels greatly restricted by painting, because she knows too much about technique, and she can't escape it to get to the value in the content - it's a constant battle for her, so she loves to play the piano, because she doesn't know much about it - finding it thus a faster channel to her inner moods, as the critical mind is absent.
