Here's another pair of images from our trip last fall in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. These two images have a shift in the composition as well as in the sunlit highlights through the clouds. Which makes for a better image?
In the top image,
I like that the fall color is more centered in the image, and, importantly, has sunlight helping to bring out the vibrant fall colors. I believe both the strip of blue sky and the dark evergreen on the right side help frame the image, making it harder for the eye to wander out of the picture. The tree also helps balance the snowy mountainside on the far left, and the sunlit center aspen grounds the eye in the primary subject. The puffy white clouds add interest to the sky, and the foreground has a valley serving as a nice S curve leading the eye to the far mountains.
For the lower image,
I like the interesting textures on the snowy left-most mountainside, and that we can see the base of the evergreens in the lower left corner. However, the high contrast of those areas pull the eye out of the photograph. The minimally-lit aspen in this version reduce their impact and cause one to question what the subject of the image actually is. The small evergreen poking out of the lower right is too small (and low contrast) to serve as a border, and doesn't really fit anymore. Finally the photo is not quite as balanced as the top: the dominant range of snow-clad mountains on the right half have more visual "weight" than left mountain, although the cloud-heavy left side does help.
For me, this makes the top image the clear winner, with the primary factors being the better light on the aspens and the second tree on the right border. But art is in the eye of the beholder; which do you prefer?