I would disagree. It is not really about the amount of light, but the harshness of it. It means the smaller and more potent the light source, it will create awful reflections and very harsh contrast.

Editing such photos is also a pain because they almost always get burned out highlights. An evenly lit flower photo is much more pleasant to process in a darkroom because it doesn't get any artifacts caused by the light source being too hot.

And this holds true even for macro photography.

As a simple example, a good all encompassing flash (using umbrella or a softbox) is much better than a single straight flash, even if the amount of the light produced on target is the same.

Seems like I will need to write a chapter on this.