... Do you and Eric have a reason for your preference?...
I do.
Compositionally, #1 is better balanced. #2 has two halves, rocks on the right and emptiness on the left (well, apart from the sky). The concentration of elements on the right causes that imbalance.
As for the black sky: I do not mind it in general, however, here it is inconsistent with the rest of the image, which lacks similarly heavy blacks, at least for some parts. It makes the rest of the image cutout-like.