I think that when you’re starting out as a beginner, no one wants to make a bad exposure, but there are so many elements that go into making a good picture, and therefore so many small decisions to navigate. Shooting with the edit in mind, or treating photography as data collection, feels like the antithesis of experimentation - I know, I'm probably missing the point of the discussion
A couple of things, exposing to ensure you don't blow out the highlights isn't making a "bad exposure" it's making a "good" exposure, because "fixing" blown highlights is a lot more problematical than living with blocked/noisy shadow areas. This will often, necessarily, result in very dark raw files that need the shadows lifted, but this is just what an "optimal" exposure for a subject with high dynamic range (when you need highlight detail) looks like.
And to reply out of order. The argument isn't to treat "photography" as data collection, but to treat "exposure choice" as data collection, thus leaving your mind free to focus on the "so many elements" that go into making good pictures.
Ignoring making multiple exposures for HDR, the essentials of exposure with digital is to give as much exposure as you can, while also making sure you don't give so much exposure that you end up blocking important highlight detail.
With the help of the histogram (and understanding its limitations) it's a relatively mechanical process, and I think of it as "data capture". But this is (almost) entirely separate from all the things involved in capturing the "picture'. The aim of the data capture element is just to ensure you get an "optimal" raw file for subsequent processing.
You still need to make some creative decisions e.g. what is or is not a specular highlight which I can allow to blow out, what highlights are essential to the picture. Do I need to live with blown highlights to get some essential shadow detail, or am I happy I will be able to recover that shadow detail during the processing? Am I going to need to do a couple of exposures and use HDR, to get the photograph I am visualising etc.
But overall, getting the exposure "correct" is usually a technical exercise to give you base on which to realise your visualisation during processing
In the film days (for Black and White at least) exposure was much more integrated part of the creative process. Exposure, film processing and choice of colour filter, all had major effects on how your final print would look. As did the choice of paper, paper developer, and toning choices.
One way of dealing with this in the film days, was to use Ansel Adams Zone system, which through lots of experimentation (to create an "exposure" system) and careful spot metering of the different tones across the subject allowed you to "visualise" how the final print should look, and adopt the exposure and processing approach most likely to allow you to realise that visualisation.
For example, you could visualise the tonality that you wanted a sky to appear in the print and know that to get that tonality you would need to use a x2 yellow filter, but as this would also affect the tonality of shadow areas you would need to compensate for this by changing the exposure time and the film development time.
With sufficient expertise this allowed you to visualise the final print and create negatives that "placed" the important tones in the way you wanted them to look, and also check where other tones would "fall" because of how the important tones were "placed". This still just gave you a "good" starting point for making the print.
With digital, although I still visualise how a final print will look at the time of taking, my goal in terms of exposure, after making a basic highlight/shadow assessment, is to try and capture as much usable data as possible within the raw file, which I feel is more a technical exercise than a creative one.
Now a days, improved exposure expertise comes from feedback got at the raw processor stage, rather than weeks and months of testing films, developers, filters, papers and toners.
Shooting with the edit in mind (ie to produce raw files that maximise the flexibility of choices during raw processing) isn't the antithesis of experimentation; it's helping you develop the skills to remove the technical constraints that might hinder experimental aspirations.
I realised when writing this, just how complicated this all is, and how inadequate my brief explanation is; I hope this makes some sense.
OLYM0035test OM1II custom by Cosmo Bogus, on Flickr
OLYM0035 Lightroom by Cosmo Bogus, on Flickr
OLYM0060test OM1II custom by Cosmo Bogus, on Flickr
OLYM0060 Lightroom by Cosmo Bogus, on Flickr
