To Reference or Not to Reference.

So it's been another week down since I started my "In an Art Shell" thing on DeviantArt. So here's all I've done this week, including the finished illustration I've been working on and some doodles from my livestream today :)

Also, I got critiqued by Ryan Yee today since he was in town doing a card signing thing at my local hobby shop place. I feel good about how it went, the main thing he told me with his critique was to use photo reference (since I don't ever use any). I'm not sure if this is useful or harmful for me though as a developing artist. Will I learn quicker or slower by using reference in my images? I'm not thinking it's cheating or anything, I mean I use pictures and 3d in my images all the time, but that's experimenting with techniques. This directly affects whether I can apply my gesture/body language studies. Anyway, I'm going to try it out but still do my studies and only use the reference image if I get stuck or need a refresher, not constantly have it up. Do you peoples have any thoughts on this?