I recently started looking into computational photography. I didn't realize how much of the imaging acquisition process I was ignorant of: color theory, exposure, shutter speeds ... It's all pretty intuitive, but I feel like need to learn optics to really get it all!
There's this Stanford projects called Frankencamera [1] which is pretty jaw-dropping. They do a bunch of cool stuff but the one feature that really stood out was that you can take a photo and then focus it in post-production.
A few friends have done (taught) Masters degrees in photography (at a medical university, no less). A lot of time is spent painting, drawing, framing; exactly as you say, photography involves much than just pointing a camera.
