This process to me is not really photography. They're making a photorealistic composition. Why bother with all that work, getting the conditions right, when you're going to photoshop it afterwards?
Cue sunshine telling me how all photographic images have post-shot interpretative processing(?).
When I use tools to create a composite where the disk of the sun is visible through clouds, and the back of a mountain below is added from a second shot, is this not photography? Because it allows the viewer to see a scene a camera with its limited dynamic range cannot capture in one shot. Yes the editing may take hours.
Grayscale is not very realistic, is it? Yet we adapt our perception and agree that it captures some reality.
One can use the tools to create a representation of the scene so that observers would agree this is what they saw. And one can use the tools to create a new scene from pieces.
I like to take pictures of scenery with the moon in it. I have no problem using different contrast settings for the moon. But I wouldn't allow myself to move the moon around in the image. Why not?
When we use computers to create faces combining millions of shots, it can be argued that this is photography too. (Though I do struggle to use the term here.) The deception comes in only when we present the scene as having existed on its own.
