Originally posted by Liney I'm interested to get opinions
Good, because that's what you'll get
First of all, I don't really think there is any such thing as photography representing things "the way I saw it". For starters it's a three dimensional scene projected onto a two dimensional medium - through a lens that will warp perspective one way or another. But that's another debate altogether.
I'm rather inconsistent in my processing. Sometimes I stick to adjusting the basics only (fix whitebalance, pull down the highlights, raise the shadows, pull in the the white and black points, often reduce saturation somewhat, sometimes crop a bit) - in other words staying fairly close to "what I saw". Other times I can go through a much more complex processing e.g. adjusting exposure and colour locally to focus attention, remove distractions etc. I tend to spend more time processing images in b&w than in colour, though. I think we tend to accept more outrageous processing as "real" when colours are removed and thus b&w leaves more room for artistic interpretation while still pleasing the crowd. And we all want to please the crowd, don't we. (Yes, yes, I shoot for myself and all that, but if I didn't care about what others think, why would I post my images?)