DPP: Exercise 20: Improvement or Interpretation?

This exercise is intended to explore alterations that fall somewhere between correction and enhancement.  The former are things like removing dust and lens flare, while the latter are efforts to improve (a word descriptive of the photographer's values) on optical and sensor technology.  Admittedly, the line between these two is not always clear.

In this example we have three dark skinned people, waiters at a local restaurant collecting juju berries, shot towards the end of the day in low angle light.  The series of three photographs here show:

1.  How the image appeared straight out of the camera.  The background is well exposed and except for their faces, so too are the people.
2.  The addition of global changes brought out an acceptable level of detail in the faces of the supporting cast, but not the main actor.
3.  Application of a painted exposure mask brought out sufficient detail in the subject's face.

Is this level of intervention ethical?  Perhaps this is best answered by another question:  Assuming the image does not appear unnatural, does it deceive?  My feeling is that it does not, but that it may be untrue at a rather insignificant level.  That is, it is not the truth that my camera as it was set at this particular moment captured an image that appears as adjusted when looked at by Lightroom 5 on my Asus computer.   This seems to me a rather contingent level of truth and one with which I should not be particularly concerned.

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