Hook Norton Brewery

I thought you said you couldn't get a D-cent shot of it?

I initially rejected this picture as too messy, but after adjusting the composition westwards, removing a mass of cables and darkening distracting foreground detail, I managed (I think) to get a half-D-cent result, yes.

Crisp winter day with a strangely flat sky, but looks brighter halfway down on the right.

Strange or not, it was a crisp but also slightly misty day and that sky is exactly 'as was'.

Unusual for you not to tamper with your sky or colours.

Yes, but not in cases like this where the rest of the scene contains a lot of (here, perhaps too much) fussy detail, and the sky, what there is of it, is best kept plain. And as for looking brighter on the right, it does, because it was - winter skies, particularly, are lighter closer to the horizon.

I'm afraid it's the old story of Matilda who told so many lies. If you keep doing it to so many of your pictures, I'm bound to get suspicious about all of them.

P.S. I'm not suggesting that you are lying,
but the camera that never lies (as was once claimed).

The metaphor was, I think, a journalistic one. The camera always lies in that no scene (at the very least by virtue of having been reduced to 2 dimensions from 3 and reproduced in a different dynamic range and perspective) can or will appear identical to the original scene, and this must be accepted a priori.

I can appreciate that. But it's the exception that proves the rule. Contrary to appearances, the very Shepperton-looking sky in this shot - www.flickr.com/photos/14463685@N07/2626164552 - was 100% genuine.

The sky there looks very fitting, but why does the tree have a white rim around it?

The white is the building behind it.

The white rim has gone now, which means you must be up to your usual jiggery-pokery,
because there isn't any white building behind that tree.

Then we're taking about a different tree.

Maybe there are several trees together, so let us call it foliage. The foliage behind the white house had a very noticeable white rim around it's upper edge, which has now disappeared.
So stop beating about the bush and tell me what you've been up to.

Wonderful! Ticks many of my boxes.