Two thoughts; no, three:Tosspot wrote: thanks gladstonin' & Roanoker...
Roanoker...i was apprehensive about posting that one photo because it's so obviously photoshopped. a lot of the shots I took in the west bottoms facing westward came out with messed up skies due to the sun setting. If I had been really ambitious, i would have returned to the bottoms the next morning when the sun was in the east and re-shot those westward facing photos. ah, there's always next time.
1) Photography is art. So you can do whatever evokes the reaction you seek from the observer.
2) Photography is reality. So if your camera doesn't "see" the scene properly (e.g., messed up skies), you can correct its mistakes to more accurately reflect reality.
3) Photography is a visualization of your current emotion, impression, thought, intent, etc. Do what you must.
I remember some years back when National Geographic digitally moved an Egyptian pyramid or two so an image would fit better on the magazine cover. The publishers would have fared better if they had just murdered someone. I constantly brighten too-dark portions of images in Photoshop, clone out those blankety-blank power lines, and crop pictures to improve composition. Feel guilty? Not me!
Furthermore, I'm to lazy and/or stupid to learn how to use all the settings on my wonderful Nikon D70, so I keep it on Auto and then "Photoshop" the adjustments after I take the pictures.