Here is my question that I battle in my head all the time-how much color correction should you do to pictures taken on a grey day? I looked at the ones the other lady took and they (to me) look overly vibrant given how dull it was outside yesterday. The pictures themselves look fine but I know colors were not popping like that so I feel kind of like it is altering the day.
So, I guess what I am asking is how much do you alter the color on grey day shots? I almost feel like I will lose the memory of our opening day being cool and rainy if I brighten up the shots too much. Do you alter the color to be more vibrant than it really was or do you clean it up and keep that true feeling of the weather we were playing in?
I know this is a very subjective question and there is no right or wrong-I would just love to know some other opinions on this because I ponder it quite a bit.
Or, how about the same question, but going in the opposite direction: Is converting a color photo to black-and-white considered "altering reality"? Instead of making the colors more saturated, like that lady was doing, you'd be making the colors desaturated when converting to black-and-white.
In fact, wedding photographers often do "cross processing" actions in Photoshop to make some of their photos look more vintage and classic.
Or, are there times when the camera didn't "see" things accurately? How many times have you taken a picture indoors, only to find that the picture had a bad yellowish tint? If you have, it's because of the camera's white balance and the incandescent lights in the room. Our eyes see white walls, but the camera sees them as yellow!
Or, have you ever taken a picture in the snow (or a predominantly white scene), only to find that the camera captured everything a lot darker than it really was? Did the camera really capture "reality", or did it not use enough exposure compensation?
Or, are we "altering reality" when we use a different camera setting, like "more saturation" or "more contrast"...the settings that are buried somewhere in your camera's menu options.
Or, are we "altering reality" when we use flash? Are we "altering reality" when we take a picture that's out-of-focus, whether intentional or not?
Or, are we "altering reality" whenever we change the shutter speed, or the aperture, or the ISO? In portraits, for example, photographers try to use large apertures (small f-numbers) to blur the background. Yet, in real life, do we really see that creamy bokeh (soft blurry background)?
I think post-processing your photos is ok, and, in fact, is a necessary last step in photography. I don't think photography ends after you press the shutter button. You are otherwise depending on some engineer in Japan (the one who created your camera's sensor many years ago) to tell you how the scene in front of you at this moment should look like.
When I look at photographs, I like to see some contrast in the overall photo (otherwise, the photo looks "flat" and dull). I like seeing somewhat vibrant colors. I like seeing blacks that are truly black, instead of blacks that were captured as dark gray in photos. These are the post-processing adjustments I tend to do to my photos in Lightroom (or Photoshop, Aperture, etc).
On the other hand, your concerns about too much post processing are valid. In general, I don't like seeing photos that look "fake", such as colors that are over-saturated or even out-of-this-world, although there are times when oversaturation works for a photo, as Experiment_626 mentioned above.
In the end, photography is both a skill and an art. Each photographer defines their individual style by finding the right balance between skill vs. art that appeals to themselves and to their audience.
