the best light for outdoor photography

When is the light during the day at its best for outdoor photography? By outdoor, I'm referring to mostly land and seascapes, city/urbanscapes, and possibly nature photography.  Many professional photographers will tell you the best time is during Sunrise and again at Sunset.  Admittedly the light at these times is simply amazing.  But, does that mean you should only photograph at these times to get the best possible image? Of course not.  Like the saying goes - the best camera is the one with you, the best time of the day is when you're out photographing, whether it's mid morning, noon, or mid afternoon. With todays cameras and software capabilities it just takes a little more creativity and understanding of the available light to get that perfect image. For example, think Black and White.  Look at the work of the masters when Black and White was the predominate means of photographic images.  I seriously doubt they were concerned of only photographing at Sunrise or Sunset.
Here are a couple of examples I have been working on to illustrate my point.

The upper color images are the originals scenes and the lower images are the result of processing in both Lightroom and Aurora HD.  The original landscape was taken at Yosemite NP around mid morning and the cityscape/park was taken in downtown Dallas, TX around mid afternoon.  In my opinion, I think both are successful conversions for two reasons.  Converting to Black and White and secondly the fact that both have interesting and dramatic skies/clouds. (Click on each image for larger versions). 

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