> "There's a much higher degree of creativity / variability inherent in drawing / painting / pixelating over than in photography simply by the mechanical process alone."

I'd argue you don't understand photography at all if you're making this claim, particular when one is talking about fine art photographers (as opposed to, say, sports). This is especially true today, where photographers are making pixel-level adjustments after squeezing the shutter.

Photography is not as simple as pointing the camera at something and pressing the shutter. Hell, just off the top of my head:

- What sensor size/film size? Your choice influences the depth of field, resolution, sharpness, and dynamic range of the result.

- What film? Your choice influences the color balance, reproduction opportunities, dynamic range, grain structure of the final image.

- What lens? Your choice determines the perspective of the image, as well as the requisite warping or flattening that comes with it. It also determines contrast (both macro and micro), sharpness, not to mention specialty lenses where you're determining the shift and orientation of your plane of focus. Lens selection also determines the look of bokeh (out of focus areas of the image) and flare - controlled by the size and shape of the diaphragm.

- What filters? Polarizers alter your composition significantly by eliminating certain forms of reflections. Neutral density filters allow for longer exposures to increase the effect of motion blur (or other creative uses). Colorized filters allow for a conscious control of particular tones in monochrome images (think of it like a transfer function).

- What shutter speed? This controls the amount of blur you have, the sharpness of the final image, and creative use of it can be used to isolate subjects in motion, freeze them, or any combination of the above (and that's just one common use of fine shutter speed control).

- What aperture? This determines the sharpness of the final image, as well as contrast, and the depth of field (e.g., the blurry "out of focus" areas of the image). A skilled photographer controls depth of field precisely, including exactly the things he/she wants, and nothing that is unwanted.

Nooow we get beyond gear selection into composition:

- Perspective. Where are you shooting from, where are you shooting to?

- Exposure. How is the image lit? What is the dynamic range of light? (the range from brightest to darkest portion of image) - the decision here affects the look of the image in a huge way.

- Framing. This is self explanatory really. What subject(s) do we include and how?

- Focus. How thick is our depth of field? What do we want to include in focus? What do we want to exclude?

And nowadays you have the litany of tools (Photoshop being just the beginning) where photographers are exercising a great deal of control over their images, often at the pixel level.

I highly object to your claim that photography is inherently less creative/variable than drawing, painting, or pixelating. This reflects a complete ignorance of what is required to create a photograph. The fact that modern DSLR cameras have essentially thrown all of the above on full-auto doesn't remove the fact that professionals and serious practitioners are using all of these creative variables to their benefit.

Your view of photography is akin to looking at a photocopier and saying "well, drawing isn't that creative".