You may enjoy reading Guy Tal’s More Than a Rock. It’s a subject that really gets him going. He feels strongly that there should not be a marriage between photography and a capture of exact reality. The truth is that from the times of the Renaissance onward art has tried to accurately depict reality. The only reason it didn’t was due to lack of skill and lack of good paints. Artists used to grind their own paint until the late 19th century when you could buy it in tubes. The truth is that realistic art is still art and therefore that can’t be used as a criteria.
Yet Guy often rails against images that are ‘representational’. If you’re on Facebook you might follow Guy’s page because he includes quotes with each of his posts. Even his blogs are sprinkled with quotes. One of the most interesting quotes came from someone I now can’t even remember. It said that all good art must have one ingredient: mystery. That strikes me as very true and it applies to photography as well. My better images, I feel, are not about what you see but what you think when you see them. They are purposely ambiguous to activate the imagination. Past photographers like Weston and White were very creative yet they shot unaltered images. The creativity, the art, comes from inside the photographer. Yes a painter creates something from nothing but so does a photographer through her imagination. A recent example here is @Harley_Goldman’s image of those mud cracks. It’s an image that wants the imagination to take off.
https://community.naturephotographers.network/t/patterns-on-patterns/25373/16
It strikes me that the only way that a camera is just a simple tool that does all the work is if you timed a series of shots and went for a walk with the camera at your side and a shot went off every 5 minutes. Anytime you make a choice with the camera you are in charge and not the camera and it’s your image. Cliche image are disliked so much because you made the shot but it’s not your image. Personally, I think that applies to cliche compositions as well. The lake in front of the mountain with a few clouds above. Or those undulating dunes in Death Valley.
It’s a big subject.