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When you are out in the field shooting, many landscape photographers tell you to go take a nap during the flat mid-day light. I disagree with that advice. Yes, the light from the sun coming from high angles does give rather flat lighting conditions. I say, "Use the light you have." You are on a photo trip, you've shot at sunrise and now you have to look for other targets of opportunity. This time of day is great for looking for things in nature that are more abstract. Things like patterns, textures and shapes. This is also a great time to seek-out close-up shots and do some macro shooting. You can find all these things during the mid-day. Keep a collapsible reflector handy in your camera bag or vest. Use it with your camera on a tripod with the remote shutter release or the self-timer feature. Even on an overcast day, you can use a flash.

I took this shot at about 11AM. Was the light flat? Not really. You can see a shadow from the Joshua tree. In winter, the sun is lower in the sky all day than it is in summer, so the lower angle of the sun gives some degree of cross-lighting. In summer, the higher sun angles give us flater lighting.

The clouds make this image interesting. If I had gone back to my trailer and taken a nap, I'd have missed a lot of opportunities to get some great images. For this image, I positioned myself and the camera to get the tree and clouds into a pleasing configuration. I lined up the clouds with the top of the tree. When you see a great sky, with dramatic clouds and a nice foreground, don't just bring your camera to your eye and snap. During this part of the day, you are not hurried by the sun coming up or going down. Now is the time to set-up the camera on the tripod and carefully frame and compose your shots. Remember the 'Rule of Thirds.' Use contrasting colors. Take into account the dominance of the elements of your composition. Make it all work together. Take lots of shots. Use your camera's display to check for composition and exposure.

The story here (and with the earlier one) is that we were walking down a trail, coming near the end of a long hike, feet, legs everything pretty well screaming at me and reminding me I am not as young as I used to be. The trail was full of roots sticking up, so lots of looking down to not trip, plus its an area full of gators, The two people I was with were ahead of me, when Sally screams out EAGLE!!. It had been perched right over our heads, No time to see what settings the camera had, just pull up the camera, grab focus and FIRE THE SHUTTER TILL THE BUFFER FILLED UP... I shoot manual, so no auto exposure adjustments, I was lucky that the last shot I had taken was of a bird in the sky, so it was set pretty close to right. It was mid day, so the light was from above, got the shadow on the wing, but there was a little detail in there to recover. Wish it would have flown towards me, but Thanks Sally for screaming so I could look up and fire away.