The landscape under your feet

It's always a problem for me.. what to do during the middle part of the day? The sky is blue, not a cloud in the sky.. most would say: "It's a beautiful day", but photographers say: "this sucks!" I often drive the better part of a day to get somewhere interesting to work and then have to deal with that mid part of the day when the light is harsh and the colors are all washed out, so I normally use that time to drive around and familiarize myself with the location and scout out where I want to be early and late in the day.
Sometimes you get lucky and there's some interesting weather, or some nice clouds to filter the light, but one other alternative is to concentrate on smaller subjects right under your feet. Not necessarily macro shots (which you can do anytime), but close-ups and abstracts where you can look for textures and colors that are less affected by the quality of light that might not work for a larger scenic.
In this case, I was at Point Lobos, a nature reserve just south of Carmel in central California, and facing the "mid-day dilemma", so I spent a few hours just shooting the many interesting rock formations at Weston Beach. The formations in this tidal area are so colorful and varied, that they are mini landscapes all by themselves. This kind of image is really fun to work with when you get back to the studio... you can experiment with cropping, burning, dodging and saturation; working it like a painting with no particular goal in mind other than to make it into a pleasing composition of shape and texture.

"Rock Flow"-Point Lobos