"It seems to me there are two camps here, (and elsewhere in the wider world) there are the professionals, people who understand composition, lighting, mood, etc."

More than that - and many people are a mix. For example I do design and animation for a living... it took me a long time to get my skills together and I understand a lot of that stuff... but I am not an artist in the way >I< think an artist is.

Then again, neither are most artists :) A friend of mine spends weekends with Boris V (the Boris, as it were) and I remember how crushed I was when I found out Boris used reference photos - I thought that was cheating for a long time.

Again, this isn't to put anyone down - I would >love< to have 1/3 the talent that Skool has for example, and I love the images themselves.  I just don't have the skills. Could I leanr to be a passable post artist? Sure. But I think the time it would take >me< is better spent figuring out how to get the lighting in Max to have that quality :) As such I love to when I can do something in the renderer itself.

In other words, I get a LOT more jazzed by a good hair prop than I do a tutorial on how to paint hair :)