Colour temperature is a description of the colour of light, and more specifically the colour of a source of light on spectrum of blue to orange. With candle light producing a warm and orange hue falling in at around 1800K and daylight being much cooler and bluer, falling in at around 5500K (The unit of measurement I am referring to is the Kelvin, denoted by its symbol: K). Much cooler light than daylight will measure in at much higher Kelvin numbers i.e 7000K-10,000K and warmer light at much lower kelvin numbers i.e. 1000K-3000K. All light will fall in the range between 0K and 10,000K.
However, when managing the colour temperatures of your images, cameras don't always have to be balanced to produce accurate results, if you set your camera to 1800K for example, it will think it is shooting at candle light. To compensate for all of the orange light that comes from candles it will add lots of blue to the image so that any white in the scene still appears as white rather then turning orange from the candle light. However, if you tell your camera to shoot at 1800k when really you are shooting with incandescent light at 2800k it will cause the scene to look more blue then it is in real life. The reverse of this phenomenon is also true. If you shoot at 10,000k when really the colour temperature of your scene is 7000k it will give the scene a warmish hue. I have provided some extreme examples below.
Playing with the colour temperature on your camera setting is a great tool to get creative with the colour of your images, slightly altering the hue of your shots can also help to provide some context or give meaning to your images. The same is true for colour balancing your shots on the pink to green scale, not only orange to blue.
Thanks for reading ! Feel free to check out my website at: www.josephrigbyphotography.co.uk
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