That’s understandable. I said that I hope you can use the concepts that you connect with, and I tried to imply that to do so you may have to read around the authors.
What I’m trying to say is that these authors are professional photographers and also teachers. We aren’t in their classroom, we can’t request a different approach when it’s not clicking. But they aren’t wrong.
Get past their style and focus on the concepts and, at each one that interests you, use different authors to change the approach.
I also agree that cropping isn’t a bad thing per se, but I do think that it doesn’t really help with composition. It’s another retouch tool to tidy up, like dodge and burn etc.
Additionally, attempting to make your image as final as you can in the viewfinder, can only go to improve your compositions. Practice…etc.
As always, there is some errant info in this, and there is a great deal missing entirely.
For a much better explanation of composition, I urge you all to read this article on Petapixel - 10 Myths About the Rule of Thirds.
I agree with M43 for birds and the OM-1 for sports. That’s an extraordinary camera although it’s twice the price of the R10 with a lens.
The Canon closed system isn’t really a problem though. The two lenses mentioned are good enough for anything and well worth the money.
The overall value of the whole kit makes it very competitive and the impression I had from the OP was that budget is important.
There’s also the added familiarity with Canon that shouldn’t be underestimated.
Ha, yeah that’s fair. I’m probably overly pragmatic, engineer mindset!