Why are manipulating the pictures?

I am very happy that my posting here initiated this discussion and I really enjoyed reading your arguments. I agree on many points you both are saying, tend to be on Aref's side of the arguments and still have some comments:
Creativity: what is this? Wikipedia says: "is a mental and social process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts. An alternative conception of creativeness is that it is simply the act of making something new.". If we take this definition for valid leads me to conclude that using a toy camera, plastic lens or expired film is not an act of creativity itself. To my understanding creativity are acts based on ideas created in your mind. A random outcome of such lens or film is not creative. It is simply a random product. Now, you would say, but you know what such a lens or film like that would yield more or less as a result and you use these, to me tools, to achieve such a result. Here, I would say that the tool doe not matter as far as the picture expresses that what you had in mind that it should express. So, I am agreeing with Aref, it is a tool. There is also nothing that is better or less better in achieving such a result.
Art: Looking at Wikipedia once more it says that “Art is the process or product of deliberately and creatively arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions. In its narrow sense, the word art most often refers specifically to the visual arts...”. By the way, it is interesting that this definition (if you continue reading it at Wikipedia) does not include photography! OK, this is one of thousand definitions of art. Assuming its correctness if a a blurred and vignetted picture is regarded as art then it does not matter how this art has been made, with a bad lens or a few photohsop layers. The act of creating these by the way per PS does not necessarily mean that everything is made using a macro. The photographer can process each picture individually. So what about Uniqueness? Perhaps it is important if you want to give that particular piece of work a value and values depend on quantity. Are Warhol's popart prints art? They are also a reproduction using silk screen at the “factory”. Anyway, many people do not agree on calling photography an art including a some photographers. I read once the retrospective of Jean Loup Sieff “40 years of photography” about his feelings about his work and photography he says in (page 67, the 60s, translated from the French text): “In these good old days very photography books were published and there were no galleries that exhibited photographs. At least photography concerned only photographers and it was not yet granted the gift of empoisened official recognition. It was not yet invaded by the theoritising gurus, the chatty apparatchiks and all sort of losers. We were among each other and we did not talk about art but we were talking about lenses, trips and hopes. We did not put on white gloves to look at our pictures that were still not “vintage” and we only wanted to work with pleasure.”. So, I regard him as a master photography and he does not seem roregard photography as an art. I agree with him. I only want to make pictures and enjoy doing this with any means or tools. And no, I am not making art. I only don't understand why I am looking forward to change the pictures and give them another dimension.
And Aref, you are presumin that the “artist” or let us say the photographer here is doing things by design I.e. he exactly knows how things should look while shooting them. Well, there might be some photographers doing so. Still, I tend to think that most people discover the potential of the picture afterward and emphasise certain features in it or discover its potential while processing it. Perhaps professionals work by design and most others not. I am one of the latter sort. I tend to explore the picture not only while shooting it as it certainly appealed to me then and I took it with a certain light and composition but also during the post-processing. Perhaps this is not serious work but this is how I am making my pictures and hope that I (and you) keep on enjoying that no matter which means are used.
Probably by citing Jeanloup I am putting myself and the friends discussing with me here under the definition of theoritising gurus or chatty apparatchiks. It is not my intention to offend anyone. I am simply looking forward to make some pictures, sometimes understand what I am doing and see your beautiful pictures through this marvellous medium, Ipernity.

Thank you both. By reading you you remind me of so many kinds of pleasure of making a picture. I find Aref's expression "we shouldn't transform it into dogma" very fundamental and in this context it does not contradict at all with Absche's "the journey is the reward" in the context explained. Yes, Absche, I fully agree with you this time regarding the thrill of making all these steps that take effort and need a lot of patience in order to get your images. Taking time to put the film into the camera, set the camera up, wait impatiently for the development of the pictures. All this is a great thrill and give the pictures such a great value, and what I mean here emotional value to the photographer who shot them. I also red about another famous photographer: Richard Avedon. He was given a digital camera and after a while he decided not to use this medium anymore. He was asked why and he said (translated from a German article) : "Today photographers make 3 pictures and then they run to the computer to see how they were. This way one is permanently interrupted and nothing can develop. I see on the pictures of today: They have no depth". In another discussion he said he did not like it because by suing it one has no time to think. So, I think this time to think is essential and taking it by doing these rituals you described is a key factor indeed. At the end we come to Sieff's words: "we only wanted to work with pleasure". So, we should make the image (using now Aref's word image and not simply picture) in the way you like as soon as it gives us pleasure.
I have my personal problem with the word "art" as I am not able anymore to distinguish what is art and what isn't. I thought that art is about (as Wikipedia above said):".... elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions". As many of the works of modern so called art do not have anything with the above mentioned aspects in my opinion I ceased to know what art is. I have the impression that it is now more about public relations and "selling ideas". So, as I cannot distinguish what art is and what isn't then I prefer to step back from it. Maybe the word art also induces high expectations in me that I cannot fulfil. So I prefer not to get near it.
Therefore, I am making images (often only pictures) that I enjoyed making them and looking at the result and I hope that somebody else enjoys looking at them too. I am also happy to have the chance to look at your images too, enjoy their beauty when they appeal to me and also learn a new way of looking at things.

I disagree in the asumption, that the technical development improved our pictures. I am a Minolta addict, so I want to give a Minolta example. Form the "nature" side, that is from the view of the object I want to photograph, the light has to go trough many lenses, a diaphragm, a shutter is involved, and then, at last, it will hopefully target on my film or my digital sensor. So the sensor or the film is the last step in the whole picture taking process. One of the best Minolta zoom lenses is the beercan, which was introduced in 1985. This is more than 20 years ago! This lens, I got mine for 60€ some time ago (lucky me...) is comparable to a new out of the shop 70-210 lens in the 1500€ price range. So, 20 years ago I could use lenses that are hard to beat even nowadays. This surely is true for Canon or Nikon lenses as well. And lets face it: The step to digital was a big step back regarding picture quality and the camera manufacturers had struggled hard to get back to a full frame sensor. If you are interested in some comparision between film and digital, between cheap and expensive, please look at Ken Rockwell's webpage, he has some interesting things to say.

Is a fake Polaroid a Polaroid? No. A fake Polaroid may show some digital darkroom wizzard skills, but at the end it is a fake. If one wants to take a Polaroid, one has to take a Polariod. Not easy nowadays... Sure, one can say that the digital darkroom part is an artistic part, too. The result may be an artistic picture, but no Polaroid. It is like a copied Mona Lisa. Artistic, but...

Ok. For me, the conclusion is that if I want to make a pinhole cam picture, I have to get my hands on a pinhole cam. If I want to make a picture that looks like analog, I have to carry a medium format or a 35mm cam and do the step to digital later in the process. With a scanner or with a lab that scans the pictures directly firsthand. This is a tedious process, takes some time, you have to carry some gear, may be, you even have to develop your pictures yourself. So one might try to get rid of this process by making the easy taken DSLR picture to something it isn't by digital artistic. I understand the reason behind that. I won't do that, if I want to make Lomo pictures, I would buy a Lomo.

Thank you for your opinion. I fully understand what you mean. Now, coming back to my last comment, let us say if somebody is looking at a picture of yours on Ipernity and did not look on how it was made and does not even care, would it to him change any in his impression of the picture if it is a true or false Lomo picture? It is surely a big difference to you because you know how you made it and and you experienced the whole steps that were necessary to make it. But by uncoupling the process of the production from the process of viewing the end result might look pretty the same, and I think that this is what matters to the person looking at the picture.
Now I would like to know your opinion about what can be achieved by making pictures using a Lomo or a pinhole camera. My question is more precisely that you are using these techniques because you know that the pictures would have certain characteristics. What is the role of these characteristics in the final expression of the picture? When would shoot with a Lomo and when would you shoot with your Minolta camera and the lens mentioned above? Some friends above said their opinion on that and it is interesting to know yours.

My experience in this area is really limited. If you browse my ipernity pictures, you won't see a artificial flavoured picture. Except for some B/W pictures, which were taken with my DSLR with in-camera B/W setting. But let's talk about me and a Lomo picture. Understand that the following is MY experience and I don't want to turn down anyone who makes digital Lomo.
Indeed I have some lomo-ed pictures that I wanted to bring to Ipernity. But - I photograph nature. On vacation or on mountain walks or wherever. And if I have a good and strong feeling for a picture, I put it on Ipernity. Some sharpening, some curves, may be a gradient filter, but that's it. Now there are pictures I am connected to, that are not really good. But I WANT to show them, because they say something to ME. And absolutely nothing to anybody else. So I grabbed these pictures and did some Lomo or other artificial thing. And in the end I got a nice picture. But for me it felt like a burned cake that gets a real big worked out topping to hide the underlying desaster. So they never made it to Ipernity.

I can't answer your second question because I don't have a Lomo or a Pinhole. But I think I would have to learn to use a Pinhole and to get pictures that could be uploaded here. But I suppose that a Pinhole or a Lomo requires an other approach in picturemaking. May be I try it this year, so we could talk again next January...