The claim of photography being a means of artistic expression is an overstated one. 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 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 such as, a radiographer who takes x-rays.... Even Man Ray was dissatisfied with photography as art and resorted to experimenting with "rayograms", solarization, and other techniques to convert the simple photograph into an artwork.

With the computer however, the photographer is no longer constrained by having to frame what is before him/her. The photographer now 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.