Your eyes don't work like you (likely) think they work. As you look at the world your eyes and brain are constantly adjusting to different light levels, different light temperatures, changing the focus, and ignoring lens distortions and other anomalies.
A portion of my "day-job" photography involves making images of art installations at the gallery where I work and affiliated galleries where we participate in presentations. What I do to make these images look "right" goes unnoticed, because it's designed to. I only want you to see in the image what you would see with your eyes in the gallery. However, doing that with a camera is not as straightforward as point-and-shoot.