Primary Concerns.

It's not the photograph you take, it's what you get to see.

The created object allows other people to share in what you did, but you did it.

You can extrapolate the 'photograph' into any other art form, and the 'seeing' into any other type of personal experience, but the point remains the same. The object can be a wonderful, meaningful, important part of the process, but the experience itself is the prize.