What White Balance?

All the time on my photography tours I see people using auto white balance (AWB) for all of their shooting. They assume this setting will render colors in all situations correctly. This is not the case.

A perfect example is sunrise and sunset. The predominant colors of a low angled sun are red and yellow, i.e. ‘the golden hour’. The way cameras are AWB programmed makes them want to ‘correct’ an image they consider offcolor. The Monument Valley landscape, below, falls into that category of incorrect colors because the meters recognizes they are too red and yellowish. Therefore, what you will see on the LCD screen on the back of the camera is a landscape illuminated by white light instead of golden light. Sure, you can move the temperature slider in Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw and bring back the golden tones that you saw with your eyes, but what you see on the camera’s monitor looks dull and uninspiring. I think to accurately access (and appreciate) what you are taking, you should see an accurate representation of the images at the time of shooting.

Therefore, for all of my outdoor photography,