After one month of CGI learning, interest levels were like this:
https://www.creativeshrimp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/cg...
15 years later, this is just about what comes to mind when I read the article:
https://photodoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/24-shadow-a...
Shadows as a concept are, let's say, much more flexible in my mind now...
It might have something to do with alternately being told that some of my real photos were obvs fake, and that some of my realistically-rendered (per spec) shadows for product marketing needed to change in the fake direction, in order to fit the needed composition better.
After that I decided that all shadows would go in the cow direction whenever I felt like it, no matter how the scene was actually modeled.