This illustration summarises what photographs and paintings can do.
Photographers can work only on the scene side of the picture plane, selecting the lighting, objects and framing, and the instant at which to press the shutter release.
Painters can do this too, though they cannot produce an image with the same speed as photographers. Snapshots are famous for being so quick.
On the other side of the picture plane, photographers can do nothing unless they start to merge photography with painting.
If the picture plane divides the world into Art and Nature, photography falls on the Nature side, not the Art side. This is not to deny that there is an art in selecting and arranging a scene.