I believe the guidelines say that it’s not exactly the state you photographed it in, but the state you observed it in.
If you find it alive, but then it dies, you annotate it with alive. If you collect a living specimen to preserve it, it’s also marked alive as you found it alive (also make sure to have the time and location to when and where you found the specimen).
You should only mark an organism dead if you found it dead or naturally dying.
Remember, annotations are moreso for the data than a way to sort photos (although sorting photos is an added benefit). You encountered a live tick, not a dead one, so it would be annotated as alive.
More discussion in this thread: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/preserved-specimens-labelled-as-dead/37762