Yup, exactly that. WordPress editors (WYSIWYG and Gutenberg) are still far more user-friendly and mature than a Netlify CMS that still is buggy like hell and where many little details and YAML formattings need to be fixed in code editor. You really cannot expect such a thing to be done by a non-coding person.

There's https://www.netlifycms.org/ if you want a static site generator with a CMS, FYI.

Are you aware of any open source applications as a CMC for static generators like Jekyll? Would be very convenient to have one with a a simple github login/auth settings page and then add/edit page/post options and the ability to select or upload a theme would be great.

NetlifyCMS works with Jekyll, Hugo, Gatsby, Middleman and a few others.

https://www.netlifycms.org/docs/jekyll/

my photographer friend can use ftp

my photographer friend can also add <img> tags to static html documents.