This work proposes a fast background learning algorithm for foreground detection under changing illumination. Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) is an effective statistical model in background learning. We first focus on Titterington's online EM algorithm that can be used for real-time unsupervised GMM learning, and then advocate a deterministic data assignment strategy to avoid Bayesian computation. The color of the foreground is apt to be influenced by the environmental illumination that usually produce undesirable effect for GMM updating, however, a collinear feature of pixel intensity under changing light is discovered in RGB color space. This feature is afterward used as a reliable clue to decide which part of mixture to update under changing light. A foreground detection step proposed in early version of this work is employed to extract foreground objects by comparing the estimated background model with the current video frame. Experiments have shown the proposed method is able to achieve satisfactory static background images of scenes as well as is also superior to some mainstream methods in detection performance under both indoor and outdoor scenes.