Any camera or photo only gives you a version of reality. Exposure, white balance, 35mm vs 50mm vs 120mm, etc., can all affect the image subtly. So even with "pro tools", your RAW images are getting doctored by photographer choices.
I was driving down the 99 towards Seattle last week, and the foggy sky took on this wonderful warm glow. But my phone did what it always does with the sky: change the color balance of the sky so that it looks blue. I wish it'd just left it alone.
You can likely stick your photograph into some basic editing software and set your own white balance. I even think the built-in Windows photo viewer can do WB adjustment these days
Is it possible the appraiser was doing so?
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/iphone/iphae1e882a3/io...
I promise all dedicated cameras are also doing (almost all of) this kind of processing though. It’s needed to develop raw images at all. The specific tuning is just up to taste.
Exactly the point and exactly what is needed. Photographer choices, not camera choices. A pro[1] photographer knows what to do for different subjects, light, and goals, but phone software has no clue. Every image is a selfie for instagram.
1. Or an amateur who bothers to learn and experiment.
The drawings in old field guides are curated to a supposed "idealized" form based on their use case (i.e., to be recognized in the wild by other researchers). Those specific idealized versions don't actually exist, though.
There was a famous instance of a ww1 phototographer (dont remember his name) who would allegedly move dead bodies around in his shots to better capture what he thought was the emotional reality through the resulting image rather than what the literal scene was.
We can have all the computerized scanning of the universe at our disposal but ultimately there's always the analog hole of our judgement in its interpretation
The idea that "reality is the goal" is the product of not bothering to think at all. Choosing what to make an image of, and framing the image, will always be in service of a story or "emotional reality". It always was, from cave-wall paintings onwards.