Fine line between photography and digital art.

Going to warn you right now this post is very photography based. But I hope you still understand what I mean.

I've always wondered where the line was between digital art and photography was. Besides the obvious signs of photomanipulation that makes digital art...digital art, how much changes can you make before you end up with tampered art?

I for one never liked the idea of manipulating your shots to the point where it's unrecognizable. When the original meaning is lost, then you entered new age art, and not photography. Granted the piece can be sexy, it can be the sexiest piece you have, but can you call yourself a master photographer? or just an artist.

Lets talk about it with snapshots, photos that are taken everyday in life and show nothing of great interest.

The original shot is clearly boring, it's off place, it needs to be cropped (portions must be taken out of the photo),  the colours aren't dynamic, the lighting is odd, and maybe some other problems. But you somehow see potential for it to be a great 'photo' anyways. You work on it, changing everything to give it a different feel, a different meaning, you play with the colours, you add typography into the mix (text art), you add different textures and hide flaws.

It's a great piece of art now, people love it and admire your photography skills, but is it still a photography?

I'm a huge fan of traditional photography. Which basically means the only text you should add to your photos is your watermark (signature), the only colour tampering you should do is things you can normally do a darkroom, and the only retouching are things that, again, can be done in the traditional darkroom. And even thought i break these rules sometimes, i'd like to say that i stick by these general rules.

Which is why it makes me mad how sometimes people can manipulate the crap out of there photos and people praise them for being an awesome photographer. When in fact what they really are is just an artist.