Peter that's very interesting. I didn't know that painters do that. How would it work, does Koons do the first one and the employees do copies, or does he rough out an original and tell them to what colors to paint where?
John, what I mean is when the image is in your camera or on your computer it cannot be seen by others unless they are standing next to you and look over your shoulder. So you need to do something to the image to make it presentable. Even images that need "no" work and are perfect out of the camera need to be adjusted in some small way for presentation. For example the colors on the screen don't always print that way, so paper choice, how to adjust the image to look right on paper are necessary steps. One could even argue that framing and lighting are important steps. Audiences look at a photo and appreciate all those things but most are unaware of how all these things come together to give them their experience.
So coming back to Art Wolfe. If there is "almost nothing" to do between capture the final image why not take the jpg out of the camera and send it to Costco to print. It would be much cheaper for him. Clearly the people working for him can do a much better job which indicates to me there is somewhat more that "almost nothing" going on.
And by the way I'm raising a general question and unfortunately Art Wolfe got involved simply to illustrate my point. I think his pictures are terrific, great concepts and compositions.