I was lucky enough that when I was taking photography in school, my teachers were big fans of learning how to look at things and see what you wanted at the scene. I try to keep the images I see while shooting fresh in my head so that I can come home and try and get as close on screen as what I saw when I took the photo. I think that has been the single biggest thing that has helped me as a photographer.
I’m thinking perhaps of making a stronger point for learning/thinking about processing in terms of results and processes as opposed to particular software steps.
In that same lane of thought, from an article linked below, I thought this was good:
No one ever looks at a house and says “I wonder what brand of hammer they used to build that house? That’s how I’ll know if it’s a good house or not.”
@patdavid Incidentally I’ve been offered the chance to speak for 15 - 20 minutes about free software at the photo club at work. I’m going to put tog ether some slides (so much good stuff in this thread already), and I can put the slides on github or something. Maybe we can start sharing this kind of information so others can reuse it and adapt it.