My cat Sweetie pie

[Jerry Soto]

The friendliest cat in the world, please critique

[ScoutR]

Hi James, I like the first shot best. Focus and exposure look better to me and the background is perfect - well I might clone out the dark spot near the top, but it's not that distracting Sweetie Pie's eyes pretty well keep one's attention.
I love the expression in the second shot. This might be a friendly cat, but it certainly does not look like he/she is impressed with the camera

Wendy

[Jerry Soto]

Hi James, I like the first shot best. Focus and exposure look better to me and the background is perfect - well I might clone out the dark spot near the top, but it's not that distracting Sweetie Pie's eyes pretty well keep one's attention.
I love the expression in the second shot. This might be a friendly cat, but it certainly does not look like he/she is impressed with the camera

Wendy

Thank you Wendy for the critique I appreciate your recommendations.

[Donald]

I also think the lighting is much, much better in the first image. It is much more even and there are no harsh tonal transitions. Whereas the second suffers, in my opinion, from the wrong lighting. Even the poor cat is having to narrow down its eyes to block such bright sunlight. We have half the face in bright light that's actually caused the area below the eye to be blown and the other side of the head in fairly dark shadow, with that shadow continuing to fall of out to the right of the frame.