Early morning in light rain at the Buck Hollow overlook on Skyline Drive. A regular early morning stop for me when visiting Shenandoah National Park. The scene varies day by day and season by season. In a little more than a month there will be the start of color at the higher elevations of the Blue Ridge - my time of year.
Used a 12-24 wide angle lens in order to capture the Queen Anne's Lace in the foreground as well as some tree branches (I'm about 6 feet from the tree). Stopped way down to get sharp focus from near to far. Used center metering on the brightest cloud area plus a grad ND filter to avoid blowing out the highlights. Retained shadow area detail by using the D300's Active Lighting feature (highlight/shadow retention) and further enhanced the dark area details (mainly the top of the tree trunk) in Capture NX2 when converting from RAW to jpeg. Tripod & remote release complete the package.
To each his own, but in reflecting on eastern mountains versus those in the west I prefer the east's - maybe not as spectacular as say the Grand Tetons but softer and more inviting.