If you click here , or on the picture above, you can read more about this shot, or click here to see an enlarged version. An additional point worth making was that for the 5 or 6 hours prior to taking this photograph I drove around to various locations in Death Valley, but didn't take a single shot. I was scouting where I would shoot later in the day or the following morning. The reason my cameras stayed in the trunk was that I knew that with the exception of a very few special subjects, mid-day light is hash and uninteresting. What this means is that you have to be prepared to rise very early in the morning to arrive at your preferred location and then be ready to end your shooting within a couple of hours after sunrise.
Good light begins again a couple of hours before sunset.
But, occasionally I'll shoot well into the late morning because I'm enjoying the location. Truth is, almost always these transparencies end up in the circular file. Here's an example though of a photograph that breaks the above rule. It breaks the rule against mid-day shooting because the subject matter itself is so arresting. As it is I had to enhance the image digitally somewhat by making the yellow stripe a bit brighter than it otherwise appeared.