I quite agree with your assessment, "badly printed postcards", or standard magazine add fare, and already forgotten. No waiting for the light, no thousand shots for the one, no freezing in -30 or out at 3:00 am. Just grab some images and do what you can with them.

While I agree with your point to a certain extent, I want to point out that post production has always existed, even in camera obscura. The great photos you see have always undergone great, invisible editors. The Photoshop of old were paper masks and flashes of lights here and there, while today an editor can do so much more, but the concept is: even on national geographic, what you see is never, ever what the camera has seen. The great photos of the world have always been "photoshopped" in many, many ways, and that's what makes them good.

Very well said m friend .. These type of images will stay in mind for few days or weeks and you forget.. But real image will stay for ever

@Kerrin Naude - You're delusional if you don't think photos in National Geographic are not manipulated. I guarantee you every professional photo you see has some degree of manipulation. Any serious photographer shoots in raw, and at the very least in lightroom has to making corrections for lens distortion, white balance etc. Every tool in photoshop is based on a technique that can be achieved in a real lightroom with film. Look at what Ansel Adams did to his photos in the lightroom. His original still is heavily manipulated to get the final product long before pc's and photoshop existed. Photo enhancing is 100% an art!

Yes. I just started learning photoshop and lightroom....like today. It made me a little sad cuz ive thought back on all the amazing shots ive admired over the years and wondered how many were real and how many were manufactured. Theres a big diferrence between fixing lighting issues and dropping a lion from the zoo on a bridge in kentucky and adding tropical plants from Ace Hardware and calling it a jungle pic. Hahaha Anyway, i know i have a great eye for natural framing and appreciate the unusual and weird angle so im gonna keep flowing wit that and leave the heavy photoshopping to others. .

If only that was true, you now see highly manipulated composite digital images in both National Geographic and Smithsonian on a regular basis (National Geographic just ran one as a 3 page cover)