In reply to Pyreneenemec: Yeah, but there isn't actually much that people do digitally which couldn't be, and wasn't, done in a darkroom using film. Dodge and burn for example - put some emphasis in those clouds to make it a more dramatic landscape. The term comes from a darkroom technique. Same with cropping, saturation and so on - difference is that digital has made it much more accessible to the masses as you're not spending a bomb on film, paper, solutions and getting and ear-bashing from your partner because you've turned their bathroom into a darkroom again for the evening.
I'll very happily accept however that there are ethical considerations - cloning out a person in what is described as a documentary (i.e. as it really was) photo and so on, and I'm definitely more on the conservative side when it comes to that sort of issue. The challenge for me is still to get it right in the camera; considering the angles, the light at the time of day, whether if you took a step to the left that lamppost wouldn't be there any more and make for a much cleaner photo etc... but unless you're a photoshop fanatic I do honestly consider most post-processing techniques to be polishing rather than total alteration, just as they were in the good old days too (and yes, recognising that back in those good old days there was also airbrushing, deliberate manipulation, cloning and all the rest).
It's always going to come down to the individual I guess. At what point does it stop being photography and start becoming graphic art? I left the camera club I was a member of in the end because I got really tired of all of the top-tier members (from past awards) always submitting and winning with images which I didn't consider to be photography but more a composition made using photos they had taken and digital effects (a landscape set within a frame where the waterfall is then running out of an over the frame and into a second picture and that sort of thing). And FWIW I completely agree with you on the camera / lens point too - it's so much more about developing an eye as a photographer, and hopefully that came acros as what I was trying to emphasise in my earlier post. But I don't think that editing is cheating (proviso - unless it's done with the intention to deceive rather than enhance).
HDR's an interesting one to talk about, but I won't go there now!