Pretention ahead! Ahoy! There is no objective world that we view from an abstract, unbiased position of observer!
This is a post about a philosophical position I have, that might put me at variance with various other people in the naturalist communities.
I don't like editing my photos. For one thing, I am lazy, and editing photos takes a lot of time and clutter.
But I also have a philosophical reason for that. Sometimes I post pictures that are off-center, badly focused, in bad lights and angles...and I do all of that because I am recording not just an organism floating in an abstract space, I am recording my own experiences. My own interaction with the world is part of the story. For example, in this observation of an osprey, it was gliding overhead while I was walking and I barely got my camera out and zoomed. For some animals, I think this is especially important. My photos of Swallows often have them flitting around in a blurry mess near the edge of the picture, and that is a pretty good picture of how we encounter swallows.
Which I know for someone who is just encountering the picture out of context, it might not be clear why I post some pictures. Sometimes I've seen an animal a dozen times, but couldn't get a picture, so I take a picture, any blurry picture, to remind myself I did see it, and that it was difficult to catch it. Out of context, sometimes this looks like a blurry, irrelevant mess, but for me, each picture is part of a story.
To me, observing is a process, a record of my own interest, knowledge, technology, endurance...everything, a much as it is a record of "the world".
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I disagree with part of your premise -- there is an objective world out there. I agree, though, that we can't view is from an unbiased position (though I think we should try). About off-center birds, though, I agree! I like my photo of an osprey wing, most of the bird out of the frame. Like you, I couldn't get or keep the bird in the photo, but I'm glad I saw and photo'd it, nonetheless.
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