One must not look at the local colour by itself ,but in conjunction with the colour of the sky

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh : 12 October 1883

“one must not look at the local colour by itself, but in conjunction with the colour of the sky! That sky is grey -but so iridescent that even our pure white would be unable to render this light and shimmer. Now, if one begins by painting this sky grey, thus remaining far below the intensity of nature, how much more necessary it is to tone down the browns and yellowish-greys of the soil to a lower key, in order to be consistent. I think if once one analyses it thus, it is so logical, one can hardly understand not having always seen it so.”

In most photographs we do the same thing -that is we look at the local colour of the thing photographed ,the paddy field,the brown earth ,the rocky terrain, the water surface etc.and ignore the colour of the sky hoping to salvage the colour in editing. This is just unworkable and very often I find that the local colour comes out beautifully but a terrific mess is found in the sky .In digital photography some part of the sky gets dissipated by way of loss of pixels and the overall impact is none too satisfactory.
What is true of painting as observed by van Gogh in 1883 is true of photography today.