Postprocessing, yes or no?

Here’s a topic that I categorized in ‘Gear’ as I believe that your postprocessing software is just part of that.
In my opinion, I find that an image you want to publish should look the way you as a photographer saw it or…. at least think you saw it.
That’s why I post-process all my images. Mostly to do some minor adjustments, but once in a while, I feel like creating something extra special. For years I worked with Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, but recently I started trying out Capture One Pro as well.  Both have their advantages and flaws but I must say that CaptureOne Pro is giving me a lot of satisfaction but I also still use Photoshop every now and then.

I see a lot of images online that didn’t have anything done to them and very often that’s a pity because they’re good compositions, subjects or angles, but then they lack good light, colours or sharpness to be beautiful. In the Title photo an example of a  European Robin (Erithacus rubecula) I’m working on in CaptureOne Pro, I believe the picture gets better, but take a look at the photo below… It’s definitely one of my favourite bird photo’s, a beautiful but huge Griffon Vulture. If you are a photographer, you’ll notice immediately something is strange in the shot….. Correct, the bird and the sky are both correctly exposed and that is impossible. This is never the less precisely… what I saw when I was in Botswana. So I first captured the bird and a second later the sky and afterwards I let them melt together in Photoshop. Now I can show the people what I saw… but is it still ethically responsible? What do you use to make your pictures look better or is it not done at all in your opinion?