It's not, it's just that people who spend thousands of dollars and hours into photography are more susceptible to care. Same with music, most people are fine with $15 earphones while musicians or music enthusiasts will find them disgusting.
Music is probably a bad example of your point, as that field is famous for audiophiles insisting they can hear a difference for various things only for them not being able to tell the difference in a double blind test.
Just because there are some 'extreme' weirdos in the audiophile space, doesn't mean that there is no difference between cheap and expensive equipment.
While people might not be able to tell the difference between $50 and $5000 speaker cables, anybody will be able to the hear the difference between $50 and $5000 speakers.
