White Balance

In photography there are many, many choices and ways to interpret a scene. Here, by adjusting the white balance to shade, overcast, auto and open shade, I achieved four different looks. One can go further by adjusting the exposure up or down or the shutter fast or slow. Then you could go vivid or neutral or monochrome. Then when you return home make it infrared. So which of these has the most appeal to you?
There is another reason why I take so many photographs:  In order to get the look that I am after, it often involves, like painting, using a raw or a burnt umber, a pathalo or an ultramarine blue, a veridian or a forest green.
The digital era, while short on lasting value, is long on experimental value. In the old days, we were limited to one roll of film at a time. Kodachrome for a warm look, Velvia for vivid, Extachrome for cool, etc. That was our white balance. To achieve a neutral white balance that properly exposed the whites, we would calibrate the meter on an 18% gray card. We would hold the 4x4 card in open shade and take a meter reading. This would give us a starting point to proper exposure. We wouldn't know if we got it right until the film was processed.
Now, on average, I will take nearly 200 shots daily when I am out. That amounts to roughly ten rolls of 24 exposure film daily. In the film days, I was lucky to shoot that much in a month.
And still, I do believe that I come under the 100,000 exposure mark that Thom Hogan says you need on a camera in order to consider yourself having mastered your craft. Even today, there I was, fiddling with the exposure and white balance and focus like trying to play a warped necked guitar out of tune.
It will be a glorious day when I go forth into the field and I am master of the camera, it melting in my hands, not my cursing mouth.