Bradbury is nearly sui generis amongst the 40’s/50’s/early 60’s SciFi Writers. His stuff often feels more like Lovecraft or Clark Aston Smith. My first “adult” scifi (not juvies like Tom Swift Jr. or young children scifi like Spaceship in the Apple Tree) were two of his collections. They were R is for Rocket and S is for Space that my 5th grade reading teacher found for me in the school library. I recently got a new audible version of his Martian Chronicles and although the technology doesn’t really make sense (maybe not even then) the stories themselves are beautiful and elegant in a fashion that the Asimov/Clark/Heinlein stories usually didn’t try for. Bradbury makes a lovely palette cleanser among other SciFi. Some moderns try at his style but honestly most of them are pale imitations like art students copying a Rembrandt or one of the pre Raphaelites.
Yes, he’s a different kind of writer. In a way I think of him as being a legitimate successor to Edgar Allan Poe. Science has no place in his writing. He’s more of a poet. And not everything he writes appeals to me but there is plenty that does. He’s a great painter of stories.
Photog, painter of stories is a lovely turn of phrase. In the intro to The Martian Chronicles written by Bradbury himself it describes his style. He would write stuff and then put it away much like an oil painter revists and touches up extends an oil painting
He definitely had the artist’s perspective. Occasionally I think he went too far. But he was a genuine talent with a good ear for dialog.