I understand what most of you are saying, which is not really addressed at what I have been saying, but at something standing close by but independent of my position.
I don't think that I have stated photography cannot be art.
I think I have stated that photography is having a hard time being worthy of the description creative.
In the latter case I have made reference to the need for something to be created and not simply recorded. Moving the camera to a different spot, say in the case of landscape or architecture, isn't enough; catching the magic of great available light isn't either. Those sorts of things are simply, if only for me, making the most of what's already there. The landscape photographer who returns time after time to the same chosen spot, looking for the magic moment, isn't being creative: he awaits the moment when his God is feeling creative - otherwise, he should have been able to make his perfect snap on the first visit; but no, he awaits something that he, himself, cannot create. What that photographer is doing is using his experience to catch the moment that might come, not the one that he is able to create for himself. He exercises patience and experience but creates nothing. That is so basic and obvious to me that unless it is understood by others, there's zero that I can add to convince, not that I feel the need to so do - it's all in my own mind, the same place where any of this matters.
If I may answer EduPerez directly: you are right; but I never did say that there is no photographic art, that it cannot ever be creative. I simply put the point that I think it very seldom reaches either goal because there are not that many photographic avenues that allow it to happen. I cited the model/photographer co-operation as a distinct possibilty of both art and creativity, although that might as easily lead to both these things but not necessarily on a particularly high plane, which is another judgement altogether, but at least there is the chance. I also mentioned still-life photography, where the photographer is indeed creating the scenario as he is the lighting, neither of which existed before he put them together.
Focus tricks; blur? No, they are manipulation and technique. Nothing is created by them, it is manipulated; which does not, of course, prevent technique playing its part in the creation of something. Look, I have used differential focus a great deal - one of the reasons for my love of long lenses, and I was as convinced as the rest of us that I was being creative and the thrill of seeing different planes come and go into and from focus was magical and almost tangible; but was it creative? I used to think so, and with a vengeance! Now, I am far from so cocksure about all of that. Perhaps it was no more creative than riding a bicycle: just something I could do and enjoy.
Maybe we take photography too seriously, burden it with baggage it hardly needs.
Rob C
EDIT: My daughter is coming to stay for a few days, so I shall probably have to maintain radio silence: Please don't take that as offence.