SOOC is one of the most often misunderstood and abused terms in photography - especially by adherents - who proclaim, quite proudly - that their images have not been processed, and they are visually complete and perfect. The problem is that most of the time it's not hard to spot an image that came straight out of the camera - it is either dull and lifeless, or the picture controls have been so maxed out that the images look cartoonish, ala Ken Rockwell.

In b&w film days, it meant making a careful and meaningful composition, then setting exposure to capture the fullest range of tones, with an eye on what was possible during negative and later print processing.

This was necessary because it was not always possible to replicate with a camera and film what the eye saw. My favorite example of this is Ansel Adams iconic Moonrise over Hernandez. The SOOC contact print was pure junk to the uninformed eye, but to Adams, the negative captured everything he needed to create some art. One of his quotes completely sums it up, "Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships."

In film it was necessary to expose enough to capture important shadow detail. In digital it's important to capture highlight detail. In either case, processing was the way to balance the rest of the tonal range of an image.

Cropping is a very powerful tool. While it's nice to say that an image is uncropped, producing a carefully cropped image is often much better, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Clearly you "get it." Post processing, done with a skilled hand, makes a good picture, and it reflects the shooter's creative intent - something that - other than composition - is not possible with most SOOC images.

I think SOOC is great - and important - for certain types of photography. I have personally worked together with a food stylist and a client's creative director to make food product images. With 100% control over the lighting - SOOC was the rule. The creative director would communicate the intent, and review images live, on a computer screen, until the goals were met. Once all the images were shot and approved, they were burned onto a CD or DVD, and brought back to the client's graphic services department to turn them into product images for packaging and promotional literature. SOOC is also great for studio portraiture.

Love the fireworks - and your excellent treatment of an already good image!

Though many advocate SOOC (Straight out of camera) photography, we must not set aside the improvements that editing can achieve.
But such thinking should not make us sloppy, rather to treat that as another tool to enable us present, what we visualize within the clutter of of the moment.
Because that is the reality of life. There are times that we are limited by our equipment, time and other things that we can not control. So within our capacity, let us try our best to have it as close as (SOOC) as possible and take or add to that as little as we can to make things better.

First photo is a copy the actual capture and the second one is the cropped and edited version.

If someone is just bumbling with the plastic and plays dice with the software you are absolutely right.
Even then, once in a while someone gets lucky.

Otherwise...

Art is the pinnacle of completion (When nothing more can be added or taken away to improve or make something better) where everything works together as a whole, giving itself a life of its own, capable of touching lives and invoking deep emotion.

Hence art can be anything as long as it has that quality. A song, Painting even software manipulated photographs.
For it is not the software that makes it art but the "deliberate" effort of the person who used the software as his/her brush, paint and canvass.

Sadly, now a days its meaning and essence has been tainted with technology, money and uncritical expectations that even mundane things have been called art.