I don't do PHP anymore, but I would like to add my 2 cents. It doesn't matter if you are a beginner, if you want to do something serious with PHP (establishing business, develop apps for clients) you should use Laravel. I agree many open source projects and enterprise apps are built with Zend, but time has changed. Laravel is slowly becoming the de-facto PHP framework. I have also heard that Zend 2 (I have only used Zend 1) has a huge learning curve. So, I would suggest you to go ahead with Laravel and trust me it will be a pleasant experience.
See SitePoint's survey on popular PHP frameworks of 2015 and notice how Laravel is killing the competition.