"Photography is the art of the tangible, of reality. It is a moment in time"

Oh really? How about still life’s? How about portraiture? Define "tangible." Is a sunset tangible? Is a rainbow tangible?

And photography IS NOT ART. You take a device (camera) point it at something tangible that you did not create and push a button. Granted, you can manipulate the light, or tweak the depth of field to get a little blur, but you DID NOT CREATE anything. You took a picture. A monkey could walk up right behind you and press the button and get the same result.

Practice what you preach. Grab a brush, some paints, stretch your own canvas, learn some color theory and paint "a moment in time," then you created something that was not there. Or, let's see the Poser character that you created.

And if people here enjoy rendering without having built their own props and characters and all, then let them enjoy it. Just because you bought an automatic and took a photography class at city college, doesn't give you the right to make people feel bad about something they enjoy.

Bottom line, if someone can stack toilets and call it art, then so the simplest of renders.