Photoshop.

Photoshop is the digital photographers best friend, it not only allows you to retouch and  fix things like lighting errors, but also allows you to draw on and manipulate your photos until they change meaning completely. For example, take the picture on the left, it's just an ordinary, badly composed photo I took several years ago in a 'omg I need a myspace pic' phase. I stumbled across the photo a couple of weeks ago and said, "Steph, what do you think would make this picture better?" To which I replied, "Using Photoshop brushes to change it into a Demonic Faerie."
You can see the result on the right, a demonic faerie. There are some obvious changes in the photo, the background has now faded into black and there is now a pair of wings growing out of my back, which is of course highly illogical. This is the joy of photoshop. To twist the meaning of a photograph, from a accurate depiction of the truth to something unusual and often interesting. Photoshop allows you to create fantasy whilst still maintaining a certain sense of reality, as it is still a photograph.
And it's as easy as collecting a few different brushes.
(Click on the pictures to view them larger!)