The subject of this post is common to human potential and endeavour in any field.
How does a person become an orchestral instrumentalist - partly by genetic components such as physical dexterity and a predisposition to sound and music, and partly by developing those innate features by learning, training, practice, and more practice.
How does a person become a higher level sportsman/woman - partly by having the genetic factors to create the ideal relationships of basic bone, muscle and joint structure and coordination, appropriate to that sport, and partly by learning, training, practice and more practice.
How does a person become a good/better photographer - partly by having the genetic components required for recognising and visualising relationships of shape, form, light, colour and composition, and partly by learning, training, practice, and more practice.
There are no short cuts. The best we can do is to get shooting and processing. We might take several shots at each location, and find out what effects small changes have on the images - e.g. our position relative to the subject, the orientation of the camera, using different focal lengths, altering the exposure parameters, shooting at different times and in different light, etc. etc. Alongside practising the skills of image capture, we also need to develop our use of the digital darkroom (computer software) to process our images, in order to achieve the subtle effects we set out to achieve.
So progress in photography involves learning, training, practice, and more practice. Progress will happen, but the increments of improvement will tend to become smaller, and each increment becomes harder to achieve and harder to recognise, just as it does with regard to those other human activities.
I hope you can enjoy developing your photography skills.
Cheers.
Philip