So the “appearance vs. trustworthiness” choice explains why it's so hard to make photos that are both “impressive” and “TTG-qualified”?

Yes. No matter what the subject, the surest way to improve a photograph’s appearance is usually going to be by doctoring or aigmenting it, not by leaving it largely “as is” so that it qualifies as TTG.

This is common knowledge, which is why, as noted in #610:

“Photographers routinely hope that viewers will think a doctored photograph is undoctored, but that hope rarely goes in the opposite direction:

“Photographers rarely hope that viewers will think an undoctored photograph is actually doctored.”