The claim that photography is a means of artistic expression has been largely overstated. All one has to do is understand light, see a pattern or composition in what is already there, aim the camera and click a button (It helps if you have a good camera!). That does not mean there have not been some beautiful photographs taken... But how much of the credit should the photographer receive for something that was already there? Does framing something that is already before oneself, in which one has had no say in creating (say a nude or a landscape) constitute art? And, when all was said and done in photography what was left? the photographing of male genitalia by Mapplethorpe.... a demonstration of the absolute failure of photography to raise itself to any artistic or intellectual height. The pure photographer is no more an artist than any other technician, for instance, a radiographer who takes x-rays.... Even Man Ray was dissatisfied with photography as art and experimented with "rayograms", solarization, and a number of techniques to convert the simple photograph into an artwork.

With the computer though, the photographer is no longer limited by having to frame what is before him/her. Now the photographer has the ability to re-frame the subject and recombine elements they have photographed in a novel way. The computer now gives photographers a means by which they might become something more than mere technicians; a means by which they might express something and not simply record its existence.