According to Wikipedia this is the definition of "Fine-art Photography":
Fine-art photography is photography created in accordance with the vision of the artist as a photographer, using photography as a medium to bring something to life that only lives in the artist's mind. Simply capturing what one sees in an artistic way is the art of photography and not creating fine art. The goal of fine-art photography is to express an idea, a message, or an emotion. This stands in contrast to representational photography, such as photojournalism, which provides a documentary visual account of specific subjects and events, literally representing objective reality rather than the subjective intent of the photographer; and commercial photography, the primary focus of which is to advertise products or services.

ncribble, hello!

I take your point and your thought - but if you simply cast your thoughts toward the other modernized art form that's become democratized in the last couple of decades, music, you can see that electronics or software has become a part of it, not apart from it.

In fact, no dissemination of any recorded music is possible without electronics, and thus the encroachment of software into the actual content of the music itself is a foregone conclusion and just a matter of time, taste and the flavor of the period.

Likewise, the idea of the black Leica framed print from a Focotar neg holder representing an un-cropped image, and thus what the photographer "intended to see in the frame" as an artist's choice, will become increasingly blurred over time. A lot of younger photographers put a black frame around a shot just 'cos it looks cool and OG, without realizing its original intent or meaning.

Also, please consider modern CGI shots in feature films. The motion picture industry increasingly uses digital effects, movements, backgrounds, and all the rest of arsenal to reproduce, supplement and enhance nature or super-nature.
Given that most CGI is a blend of computer-generated software powered imagery that's allied in some form or another with scene elements that are either supernatural or imaginary, isn't the artist who is conceptualizing that blend actually the same type of person that's composing music? MIDI, sampled or original? Isn't that why we call them concept artists and digital artists, rather than craftspeople or technicians?

That's a much clearer field of distinctiveness though, the field where shots are made, not taken. [That's specialized language, so permit me to explain what I mean:

To 'take' a shot, one starts with our existing universe (the real world, eg) and removes from one's frame all that one doesn't want to see. In this sense, this is a reductionist approach, like the documentary or non-fictional piece.

To 'make' a shot, one starts with am empty frame (white paper, studio background, blank digital screen, etc.) and only adds into the frame what one does want to see. This would be the synthesist's approach, like fiction books, or the movies.

One form isn't necessarily harder or easier than the other (witness my 80-something climbs up a mountain for a "snapshot"), and in both cases a camera is placed and a shot is taken, in much the same way as reality TV and docs are shot in similar styles - i.e. realistic-looking, like snapshots.]

But it should be obvious here a shot that's 'made'... must be made with intent.
If one starts with a blank piece of paper (and unless the blank paper itself is the intention), whatever mark is made on the paper cannot be attributed to accidentally being there at the time the shot was taken. Someone had to have made that mark, with or without intention, before the shot was taken.

Likewise, when a street shot of a beggar is taken, then obviously that beggar must have been there by some, more or less haphazard, intention.

However here is the distinction: in the 'taken' shot, the prior intention was not that of the photographer's. In the 'made' shot, it was. So if the photographer paid the beggar to be there, then that shot was made, not taken. The basic difference between documentary and reality content lies right here.

Put simply, when a shot that is 'taken', then anybody could have pressed the trigger and taken whatever the camera happened to be pointing at, at the moment the trigger was pressed. That feels more to me like a snapshot.

And of course, like jazz music or random/improvised art, the borders between the two can be blurred or merged.

But I don't think that was the OP's original intention.

So snapshots vs planned shots, made vs taken photos. Crafts v art. These to me are very different aspects of what we do.

Talking about shot quality, which underlies "art":

For me, a shot's quality is gauged on: emotion, lighting, texture, background, balance, movement, shape.
Those are the elements I was trained to examine after, and to be aware of prior to a shot.

And of course there's the "meh/interesting/I like it/I love it/Wow!" school of evaluation for each one of those elements, and how they combine into a single shot (or a moment in a movie).

Ultimately though, the definition of a fine art is "that which tends towards the point of view of a single human being." i.e. the fewer people involved (creative directors, producers, agents, managers, talent etc.), the finer the art.

Thus the finest arts are, traditionally: painting, writing, music composition, and/or some kind of derivative of those. But always executed by single people, on their own. And solely to their own muses.

The rest, especially by a professional team of "creative professionals", is not fine art. They're making money, not photos, movies, music, whatever, and likely or not their motivation is their paychecks, their careers, their bottom lines.

To me, and speaking about art, that isn't it. That's craft.