Partly that, and partly the other thing. The tool can inform the work; I have a cheap junk Sears-brand lens from 1975 that does magical things with light and color, and I have shots I could not have imagined making before I discovered what that lens could do. (I'm studying lens repair just lately so I can fix its stuck aperture! This tool is worth a whole skill to me, to keep working properly.)

It isn't a professional photographer's skill, though, but a photographer's one. Anyone who tells you he's a photographer and can't talk intelligently about these tradeoffs, about the selection of constraints to fit the intent of the work and vice versa, he's lying to impress you and probably don't let him hand you a drink.