I think it's really pretty much like how you relate to *any* medium, artistically: you need the technical skills you need to get the results you want. Digital's defintely got a lot of technical stuff just about trying to translate photography into computers, if you asked me, not to mention complicating the relationship between the photog and her tools with some pretty high-tech and complicated/mysterious stuff, but it's the same sort of relationship, nonetheless.
I've always seen my photography as a little more as a trade and a craft, with the artsy somewhere between documentary and communication and what you'd call 'Fine Art,' the latter of which is kind of a heavy label for anything.
It's a good medium if you *are* technically-minded in one way or another, also in different ways if you *aren't.* That's something you can bring to it. You could be someone who's pretty fire-and forget and about the moment, or someone who takes the same images and mashes em up in a computer or darkroom, ... you could be someone like me who's good with the mechanical/physical/tactile aspects of shooting, and usually the social interactions of people photography, ...for me, it's a living/moving/breathing way of doing visual arts and communication. (End products seem to fall by the wayside sometimes, even, that's where I need discipline and such, as opposed to, say, plunking down with a canvas and paints and making it happen.
There's an interactivity to photographic media on a lot of levels that I'm very fond of, and in a lot of ways it doesn't hurt at all that I like *machines* enough that I'd still be interested in 'Cameras and how to use them' if I never made an image myself again, except maybe to keep my toe in. (Personally, for some people, you could say their hobby/interest is 'Cameras,' rather than 'Photography,' and, you know, in a lot of ways, why not. I can sure see the appeal, even if they have an annoying tendency to corner the market on Biogons.
Fact is, I'm interested in photo stuff I'd probably rarely or never use if I had it.
) I'm sure a lot of people love computer-data stuff in the same way.
It's a good thing about 'Photography,' ...it's a process a lot of people can bring a lot of themselves to in a lot of different ways.