Bear with me on this one, guys, as I'm trying to articulate some fairly unstructured thoughts. This is sort of prompted by Graham's "What is stopping you progressing" thread.
I've always thought of photography as a spectrum: at one end there is "image capture", simply recording what is there, be it landscape, sports or whatever. Then you gradually move to enhancing/refining the image through post processing, whilst still retaining the basic object of the image. Somewhere along this line you then have the "abstract" image, which is often selecting a part of an object/scene, or different perspective, which has the ability to give a pleasing image. Finally you head to the creation of an image, which may be far removed from an original source, or composed of elements of many images. (This is my mental calibration - I may be way off beam).
Whilst there are hard techniques/rules which underpin the whole spectrum (Exposure, lighting, basic camera handling etc.), it seems to me that the further along the line you go, the more there is the added something, the "artistic eye". The ability to see something which is not yet there, if you like.
I've always put myself down at the image capture end of the spectrum, on the basis that I was pretty rubbish at Art in school. I think that I can, over time, gradually make progress with the "hard" rules of photography. I've always thought, though, that going beyond that demands something that is either in your nature or not.
Fair assessment or not?