Photography is after all painting with light. It is more about the light than about the scene. Combining great light with a great scene results in a great image. Light does not always fall uniformly. Clouds in front of the sun may cause shadows in some parts of the image while there is light in other parts of the image. Mountain peaks can block the sun in some parts of the image while not in other parts of the image. Have a look at the image below.

Some parts of this image are in shadow while light falls on other parts of the image. At times the photographer just needs to wait for the sun or the clouds to move so that the right parts of the image are in shadow or lit up. Patience is your friend. Sometimes, as the time when I took this image, nature plays along but not fully. The light fell naturally where there is light and the shadows were darker than where there is light. However, the light value difference or dynamic range between the lit-up areas and the darker areas was not as much as you can see in this final image.

          Typically, when we have an image with lit-up areas and shadow areas we rejoice because then we have a dynamic image. They are interesting. In the case of this image, I did a bit of work in post-editing to increase the dynamic range. In Adobe Camera Raw I used a brush to paint in more light here and darken parts there. I did not create anything fake as the image was naturally that way. I simply lightened the already lit-up parts more and darkened the already darker parts more.

          Amateurs mostly do global adjustments to their images (adjustments that affect the entire image). Pros do local adjustments to affect different areas differently in addition to some global adjustments (such as setting the black point and white point). This livens up the image and directs the viewer's eyes to where the photographer wants the viewer to go.

          As we saw a few weeks ago, balance is important. I tried to create some balance in this image by off-setting the mountains on the left with the three tall trees on the right. Putting it all together gives us a nice image.