I soooo know exactly how you feel. But don’t worry my friend your just going through the process of learning! You will start to really see what works and what does not work. I cringe when I look at most of my images but at some point you just have to let go. Every photograph is a unique item in the world. There are no rules and all that matters is the image. Does the image work? Does it do what you wanted? What did you want it to do? The process evolves over time.
I’m just as guilty as the next guy for not using my tripod as much as I should. There is no rule saying you must use a tripod to get razor sharp images. I just want you to be aware of the tripod as your friend. Use it when sharpness is especially key and you have time to setup your images.
In this photograph in particular I like what you’ve done. You’ve tried to highlight the graffiti on the repeating pattern on the wall. This is great, seeing lines, patterns, repeition, color, and street art is great. Your eye is developing!
If you have some post processing software you could play around with the color and contrast on this image. I also improved the sharpness and compressed the levels a little.
Like this:
[attachment=0:14ohttmr]DSC04504.JPG[/attachment:14ohttmr]
Nice job here.
Don’t worry too much about all the rules and technical crap that comes with photography sometimes. Just have fun and keep shooting all the time.