I try to capture what I see, but then I enjoy photography because it makes me slow down and, with any luck, see more than I do when I'm just wandering through the day. In practise this means that I choose the focal length of the lens and the camera settings carefully, frame the shot knowing what I want in and out of the picture, maybe wait for the light to fall as I want it or even defer the shot for another day if conditions aren't right. Having done all this, I try to minimise the manipulation I do in RAW conversion and Photoshop work, but I do often tweak levels, maybe distort the image to correct verticals and even, if absolutely necessary, remove small intrusive elements of the picture that don't tally with what I 'saw'.

So I do aim to end up with what I saw but not necessarily with what another person would have seen. It's a personal reality, not an absolute one - the filter I use the most is my imagination. Isn't this what makes photography more than just using a scientific instrument to capture record shots? A strict demand for reality would preclude Henri Cartier-Bresson from waiting for the decisive moment and Ansel Adams from thinking it important to have caught "Moonrise, Hernandez" rather than "I just happened to be here now, Hernandez".