I don't want to take a point of view here but add some stuff for pondering.

If you say "recording what you see", I'll go a bit further and ask, "what do one see"?
You can't see the world like a (still) camera because the image you believe to see
is a sort of an imagination, made out of a lot of single informations and fit together
in a kind of postwork process by your brain.

The brain adds informations from pictures you saw before, skip subjects,
visualize sounds and odour, correct colors temperature, lighting and even the perspective.

So even with the most realistic approach to photography you'll still have to abstract
and do changes to show how your eyes, or better your brain saw a certain view.

Now an example and a question:
You take a walk on a beach, you saw some perfect shells, parts of an old boat and so on
and then after some walking, there's a place that gives a perfect composition for a photo.

Now, if you add some of these perfect shells you picked before to the foreground,
do you change what you see, or do you just "summarize" the imagination that is "stored" in your mind
and associated with this very beach?

cheers
Thomas