Most of the PPA and WPPI that are what the OP is describing are pictorial type images trying to imitate painting. They're even printed on canvas. I could care less what they do and the leaders are usually successful doing what they do. Its not my cup of tea. I'm a photographer not a painter and I tend to be more in line with the straight way of approaching the medium. If I wanted to paint I would do it. I do think that the work of both Uelsman and J.P. Caponigro is photography and it comes no where near pictorial or the type of work that many at PPA and WPPI would look at seriously.
These pictorial type images that many PPA and WPPI photographers produce now they've been producing for as long as I can remember. The market and much of the general public eat this stuff up as is evident by sales. But that does not in itself make the work good just like popularity doesn't make Threes Company good.
We as photographer have choices to make. What do we want to be and what kind of images do we want to make. I will rarely put down what some does to support his family if you take porn and paparazzy out of the equation but I rarely consider commercial work as anything but what it is a way to feed the family. Personal work is and should be thought of much differently than professional/commercial type work though in some rare cases the two do cross. 
