Fine art landscape photography and landscape photography

A visit to the website www.luminous-landscape.com and a featured article was "The Very Old Debate About Image Manipulation" by Ignacio Palacios https://luminous-landscape.com/the-very-old-debate-of-image-manipulation/  I'd never heard of the author, but the article had an accompanying bio which stated "he has focused on photographing landscapes and using digital imaging techniques to produce more creative and fine art work" so, with my interest piqued,  I read on. There was a revealing video of the creation of a fine art landscape image, and credit must be given to Palacios for revealing what can be achieved using photoshops tools. Indeed, Palacios appears to upload a number of videos revealing his digital manipulation of photographs, borrowed skies, paste in weather, aurora, radically altered lighting, extreme colour saturation, perspective change, changing the shape of mountains, cloning out of extraneous objects, severe cropping etc No manipulation apparently is off limits and as fine art landscape photography goes, it shows how a creative vision can embrace digital post processing and manipulate a photograph to change reality to suit the digital artists vision. But then, I've never expected a fine art landscape image to be an honest representation of what was seen through the camera view finder.

Given the demonstration of digital art in the video, I was expecting Palacios, to then write about the creative opportunities of digital manipulation in fine art landscape photography.  Sadly, Palacios presented his view on how digital manipulation is an essential technique to underpin landscape photography. WTF?

Reading the rest of the article, there were fallacious arguments, a counter view of image manipulation, pointing out of inconvenient truths, anecdotal evidence, purists views, wikipedia sourced historical info ...  Unsurprisingly the article avoided using the words 'image integrity, honesty, fake, fraudulent ...'

Reference was made to other articles he has published and googling his name revealed

https://iso.500px.com/the-very-old-debate-of-image-manipulation/
https://iso.500px.com/step-by-step-how-i-captured-post-processed-my-very-popular-image-of-torres-del-paine/

The 500px website appears to be a photo sharing website for showcasing and promotion of digitally manipulated images by creative photographers, so any positive article on image manipulation would be like throwing catnip to cats.

More insightful was Palacios' description of his personal style on his website http://www.iptravelphotography.com.au/about.php

"I am a perfectionist and I always strive to get the perfect shot. I aim for strong compositions, great subjects and light to capture the reality of a place. I try to stay for a long time at a location to develop a personal affinity with the place and the people and to have time to explore it in depth. I hope that people who see my work can feel the place as if they were there."
And
'The equipment that I use provides superb image quality and allows me to make further improvements during digital processing.'
And finally
'When I photograph landscapes, my approach is the opposite from portrait photography. While the subject and the composition are important, light quality comes first. This means using a tripod, a medium format camera, a lot of planning and a bit of luck. 

 Landscape photography is as much a state of mind as a technical skill. Patience and dedication are as important as the right camera, lenses and tripod.'

Having watched the videos detailing the digital manipulation of his photographs, I can't decide if his statement '... further improvements during digital processing'  isn't a tad disingenuous, but then there are many digital image manipulators masquerading as landscape photographers, who make no reference to post processing.

If only Palacios, spent less time digitally manipulating images and instead practise what he preaches  in the field, he might just have an epiphany that the integrity of the image actually underpins the craft of landscape photography.