Historians may gather facts, but histories are a combination of facts and narrative. Historians pick the subject matter of their histories and select the facts that go into them. The narrative can be derived from the facts or it can be imposed by the historian.
I think most historians work more like painters than photographers. A photographer chooses his subjects, the point of view from which he shoots, and perhaps the lighting or camera settings. A photographer taking shots of a family vacation is doing different work than one who is taking photos of a product for an ad, or trying to come up with something that will impress people at an art gallery. There is a lot of skill in the work of a good photographer, and even artistry, but I think good historians are more like painters.
Painting is a slower process than photography, and history work is slow. Whether it is digging through archives, playing archeologist, or even just using sources such as books and newspapers, the assembling of facts is a slow process.
Sometimes the facts are ready to be written into a history: the data a President took office, the exact wording of the First Amendment to the Constitution, or the location of a known ancient building like the Parthenon. Often, though, the historian is dealing with clues, pieces of a puzzle. A photographer captures the image of a dog; an expert may then determine its breed. But the historian may have to deduce the breed of a dog from hints such as bits of descriptions in diaries written by someone other than the dog's owner. George Washington left a diary and many papers, but most historical figures did not keep diaries.
When we move from political history, which tends to be fairly well recorded in recent times, to cultural history, the historian must get creative. A historian's creativity should be aimed at accuracy, at recreating the life of the past. Do we have some recipes handed down for generations? Well, then we can deduce something about the eating habits of our ancestors. Are the walls of an old castle high? Well, that probably is not chance, it probably reflects a balance between the offensive capabilities of the assailants of that era and the economic ability of the defenders to pile up stones.
Good histories bring an era or personality to life. You cannot do that by reciting facts. You have to understand the human beings involved and their motives.
Three of my favorite histories that illustrate the importance of combining good research with a comprehensible narrative are The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon; Food in History by Reay Tannahill; and The Outline of History by H.G. Wells. That said, not all historians are going to be great writers. The great histories would not be writable if it were not for the myriad of lesser known historical researchers who find and maintain the documentation of past eras.