Surface baking is a great trick as well but then again its only part of the whole picture you still need to set the lights etc because basicly your just baking the lighting into the surface and youd still loose the perspective desaturation etc of the pic you can get an ideo of what i mean by looking at the pic see how objects further in the background are less detailed and more destaurated Im not saying this cant be done in a render just that it adds alot to the render process that is often over looked you could used depth of field to blur out some detail in the background and volumetric lighting etc surface baking but then again rememeber if you bake the lighting inot the surface your stuck with just that light set and animation then becomes a huge pain !