Like most knitters I'm influenced by the colors around me. It has been unusually wet this summer and my yard as seen below is unusually green for this time of year. I often dream of living somewhere really wet and green and I imagine myself knitting projects in all sorts of lovely grayish heathers.
This sort of red is not common around here but I think it would be a fun color combo for a project along with some light blue and gray. I really love the section in Alice Starmore's Fair Isle book where she shows colorwork projects based on photos. I love that idea but I suspect it would be much easier to do if you had a huge yarn color palette selection like she does with her Shetland yarns.
This photo shows the colors I associate with New Mexico. Our skies really are this brilliant blue (there is a local paint shade called Taos blue that is close to this color) and the intense sun washes out everything but the sandy browns. This is the newly renovated and sandblasted St. Francis church in Santa Fe.