The Opposite Principles of Art and Photography regarding White Balance

1. Art

In art, especially in Impressionist art, the principle is: Don't paint what you think you see, but paint what you see.

For example, you know that your house is white, because you went to a home improvement store and bought white paint and painted the house yourself. But, at sunset, you see that the western side of the house is orange, and the eastern side of the house is magenta. Do you paint the house white according what you think? Or do you paint the house orange and magenta according to what you really see?

The Impressionist artists say, you should paint what you see, not what you think you see.

2. Photography

In photography, it is the exact opposite. Under a tungsten light, a white shirt may look orange. If you are an Impressionist artist, you would paint the shirt orange, because you should paint what you see, not what you know. But in photography, they want to make the white shirt look white, even under tungsten light.

To make this happen, digital cameras have different White Balance settings. If you are taking a photo under tungsten light, you set your camera's white balance setting to tungsten, and then in the resulting photo, your shirt looks white.