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Shooting in different weather conditions
What type of photographer are you? If it is foggy, do you pray for sunshine or look for a good moody shot? If it rains, do you put the camera back on the shelf or go hunting for nice reflections? Does a blizzard mean discomfort or opportunity?
Good weather may be better for the health of your camera, but if you only ever take pictures when the sun is shining, you are missing out on some great opportunities. There's also a good chance that you'll end up getting shots of a scene different from the hundreds of other people that have taken it in more clement conditions.
Rain
Unless you have a waterproof camera, you need to be careful taking it out of the bag in the middle of a downpour. However straight after the rain stops is a great opportunity to get some stunning pictures of forests, plants or even general landscapes. The green colour of plants tends to look more saturated, and the water droplets can add additional interest. Of course, for close up work, you can always fake some of this by carrying with you a spray bottle of water.
Rain can also make night shots look spectacular as the ground will reflect light to brighten the image, and introduce some additional reflections as well as eye catching colours.
Before and after a storm
Before a storm, the black clouds in the sky can lead to some powerful images although you may find that they work better as black and white photographs where you can boost the contrast and use the dodge and burn tools in photoshop to enhance the image further.
After a big storm when the sun starts to shine through the breaking clouds you may find that there is an opportunity for a very dramatic picture. You may need to be quick though as there's a good chance it will either start raining again, or the sky will clear and you'll just end up with another sunny day picture.
Snow
Depending on where you are in the world, opportunities for snow scenes may not come around that often, so it is worth wrapping up warm and making the most of them when they do.
How about trying to create your own Christmas Card scene. Everyone likes a snow scene - just remember that you may need to overexpose the image by 1-2 stops to keep the snow looking white. Play safe and bracket your shots.
Fog
Fog brings with it a wonderful diffuse light, and can create landscapes with muted colours which can be used to lend an air of mystery to an image. If you have a distinct foreground subject, the sharp colours in this can really stand out against the less vibrant background. It can work in a similar way to a shallow depth-of-field used in creating classic portraits.
Beams of sunlight can also look really good in misty conditions.
Cloudy / Overcast
Overcast conditions may not make for the best landscape photographs, but it creates a much more pleasing light for portrait shots than bright sun. You will find you'll have less problems with harsh shadows.
In dark outdoor areas such as woodland, overcast lighting can also be an advantage. A very bright sky can lead to a huge dynamic range that the image sensor can't cope with so you may end up losing a lot of detail in the shadow regions.
If shooting close-ups, try making your own light by using the flash. Set the exposure compensation to -1 to -2 stops to really darken the background, and then use the flash to provide the main light source. On most cameras, exposure compensation only changes the ambient lighting so the effect can be quite stunning.
If you are shooting landscapes and you have a flat grey/white sky that you know is not going to look good in a picture, then simply take a picture without the sky in it. And if you do have some sky in the pciture, you can always sort it out later in photoshop by either tinting the image, or pinching the sky from another picture.
 
Photo by Colin. This was daken on a day with a very bland sky - but rather than pack the camera gear away and find a pub/bar, we looked for places with reasonable compositional interest and used Photoshop afterwards to add a bit of interest. The main rule was to make sure no highlights were burned out. The picture on the left is as it came out of the camera. The picture on the right involved manipulating the raw file to bring out detail that was always in the original picture.
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