Quote Originally Posted by adina
Another point...

Anyone can get a happy accident. Luck and chance will only take you so far. If you want to get consistantly good photos, you have to know why you got what you did. You should at the very least, be able to understand the relationship between shutter speed and aperture.
I fully condone the full understanding of the equipment you are using. That's not what I mean about technical. Technical reduces the process to a series of steps or elements, not exactly the way to produce a great photograph, boring really. You have to be able to say WOW, otherwise it's cold and lifeless, if it were as simple as just following the rules, there would be a lot of great photographers out there. There are few greats.