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You make a good case, Attila. This whole thread seems an exercise in creativity, and it's been perhaps the most entertaining thread I've seen here in a long, long time. Too bad it's been squeezed into one person's perception of what is right.
Personally, I've always subscribed to the Gary Winogrand, "I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs" philosophy. I've never taken a picture that looked like what I saw, for a hundred reasons. Like Winogrand, the thrill for me is to see what the camera has seen -- and to wonder why it's different from what I saw and/or remembered and/or thought I saw.
Our attempts at manipulation of a scene may be to bring it in line with what we saw. Just as valid is to alter it to make it the way we wanted to see it.
We're talking about pictures here -- pictures, not reality.
No accounting for taste, as they say. I'm sure there are people who don't see a faint smile on "Mona Lisa," but rather a faint scowl.
As for all the renditions of the image in this thread I am surprised no one really broke out of the conventional (except for ducks and bathing beauties that we now know are not allowed). I mean really squirrel it up in some abstract way. If I had the process skills I would have done that as I see a beach and waves up front and a larger sea looming in the background.
No matter, it's all fun.
