Welcome back. I saw your first post some time back, and I'm happy you've taken the advice to shoot what's around you. Believe it or not, most of us never will get the opportunity to see up close the floating city that is an aircraft carrier, and almost any photograph of such a ship will be interesting. Aside from that novelty, however, the images will have to stand up on their own to be appreciated by a larger audience, and this is helped when the images are good both technically and artistically. There are a number of ways to achieve that.
The most common, is to have your image tell a story. As in writing, there are some conventions to follow. Just as most stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end, most storytelling images will have a visual entry point, which will then direct or invite the eye to explore, and finish with an exit. Typically, the entry point is either the brightest or the sharpest part of the image, or if it includes humans, the eyes. Then, depending on the placement of the entry point in the image, we tend to move our eyes towards the center, or along any lines that join the entry point to the rest of the image. Next, we start to depart from our initial visual scan, and we quickly examine the rest of the image. We finish either by letting our gaze drift off the perimeter, or we return to the original entry point. All this typically takes only a few seconds.
Therefore, the usual guideline of using the rule-of-thirds (place your main subject about one third from the edge, with the "power points" being the intersections of the 1/3 lines from the horizontal and vertical edges), allows the eye to drift naturally into the center of the image. Centering the image works less well partly because at that point your eye starts at the center, and in effect, doesn't know where to go next (unless it is a symmetry play, in which case other guidelines apply).
Another concept to keep in mind when developing your story, is that simpler is better. Some of the best images have a clear subject and use the background and foreground to provide context, but do not allow the supporting elements crowd out or overwhelm the main subject. This is why "busy" images with background or foreground in sharp detail, are confusing in that the supporting elements are competing with the main subject for our attention.
Photographers have two tools to direct the viewer's attention: brightness and sharpness. Since the eye tends to look at the bright parts first, the photographer tries hard to ensure that the bright spots are connected to the main subject, and not with the supporting elements. By using your exposure control and arrangement of elements in the frame of the image, you try to have the main subject "own" the brightness high ground. The other tool is sharpness - which is determined by focus and aperture (which affects depth-of-field). Usually, the main subject should be the sharpest, so the focus should be placed on the bright parts of the main subject. Then, apeture is chosen to determine how much of the foreground and background appear distinct (if context is important) or blurred (if otherwise causes distraction).
OK, enough for now... The above is only one way to make images, but in the "story-telling" method, it works well.
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