Some photographer wear photographic blinders. I know a "serious"
amateur who does or at least once did his own B&W processing. He was a
member of a small B&W club I started. One time we had a program on the
use of basic B&W filters, and used a 4X5 polaroid back on a Crown
Graphic to illustrate the effect of yellow, orange, red, blue and green
filters on a still life composed of a yellow rose with green leaves in
a blue vase. The results were graphic illustrations of the power of
these filters to alter images. In the resulting discussion and
show-and-tell session, the photographer I mentioned showed some 11X14s
of various landscapes he had taken. All were of fairly low contrast
prints, with light gray or nearly white skies and clouds that added
little to the photos. When we suggested that he try using some filters,
he told us he would never do that because he wanted his images to be
"real," not faked ones.

One of the big hurdles for beginning photographers to get over is the
belief that photographs record "reality". They do not. To begin with,
they cannot ever record more than a few of the millions of tonalities
and colors of an actual scene. The cropping of any scene to a the
"photographic" rectangle or square automatically deletes most of the
"real" environment the photographer is in. Almost any lens of any focal
length is going to subtly or hugely change perspective, contrast, and
sharpness of a scene, not to mention depth of field, which actually has
little counterpart in human vision.

Photographs, in short, are dependent almost entirely dependent on the
photographer, who wittingly or unwittingly creates a new "reality" with
every exposure.

Bob