[hengheng]

A lot of this is not photography advice, because it's not about what print you put on your wall eventually. This is mostly learning advice, eg which path promises the quicker way towards improvement for somebody starting out.

And as with most learning advice, both sides of each argument are great advice. As somebody who is learning a craft, throw a coin and re-evaluate every once in a while.

Using primes or zooms? Using vanilla VSCode vs a highly customized environment? Putting every picture through a raw converter with split toning vs taking candid snapshots? Using copilot vs typing everything yourself? Flash vs natural light? Microservices vs monolith?

All answers are right answers. The whole point is that not knowing an answer to each means that the photographer should explore the topic until they have formed an opinion. No matter how, and no matter where their opinion ends up on.

And naturally, online places tend to attract people of equal experience who discuss each of those topics, without realizing that they're all just taking part in the same learning experience.

[turnsout]

Exactly. Both programming and photography seem to attract technicians who want to believe there is a “right” way. Fast forward 20 or 30 years, and anyone still practicing has given up on absolutes and false dichotomies.

[formerphotoj]

100%

[formerphotoj]

100%