I think that what we have is so much potential in the digital era.
One thing I love doing is to take an image that in it's base state- well captured with proper framing, exposure and focus- and start to "uncover" what is hidden in that image in terms of the information that you can't see on the initial view because of the limitations of the 8 bit color space.
Lightroom, since v2, has now the ability to quickly and non-destructively start this process. I often start with an image that looks rather plain and start playing with hue, saturation, recovery and fill light to start to see what details are lurking in that image. Then I move onto what colors/shadows/highlights/details are exposed in this process, and find what is interesting in the photo that wasn't visible in the initial capture. I then try and allow this "new" information to open my eyes to possibilities of what to express in the information I am now seeing, and let that direction carry me on to something I feel has some merit in what I want to express.
This is like finding trasures at yard sales (haven't found any great lenses yet! But still trying) and finding out that the thing you bought for a quarter is worth 25.00 on Ebay! Well, maybe not quite that good..
One thing that I think has hurt the idea of PP is all the imagery that has been modified and processed in such repetition that we start to get jaded because the same type of imagery is thrown at us constantly, and frankly, just cheesy bad computer generated images!
Look at the 3d industry (which I love to dabble in, also)- in the late 80's, the block characters in the video for "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits were the pinnacle of 3d animation. Now we have entire feature length films that create new worlds that would have been unaccessible to the creative community, with a sense of artistry and realism that has reached the point where, if the artists want, they can make it next to impossible to tell the 3d imagery apart from the "real world".
It's a great time to be an artist, and with all these amazing tools, I think it's a great way to express and communicate visually!