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I posted these two pictures in the Summaron-M f/5.6 28mm thread and several people liked the first one better. First, this is a restaurant called Da Conch Shack on Providenciales, an island in Turks & Caicos. The man in both pictures is the same waiter. (I used the new Sumaron-28 and the M10). At first, when I examined in Lightroom the pictures shot that day, I instantaneously selected the second picture as the one to process, like selecting a frame from a contact sheet of a roll of 35mm film. After that I went on to process the first picture, which I liked less. However, when deciding which picture to post to my flickr site, I selected the first picture because I thought viewers would like it more because, overall, it's a pleasing composition in terms of balance, the top window not being cut off, and giving more of what people often call a "sense of place" — it is also a prettier scene: I'm using the word "prettier" intentionally here. Nevertheless, I kept on looking at the second picture and continued to feel that it's a better photograph: a more dynamic composition, and I liked the oranges in the sand, at the bottom of the frame, against the blues in the image; but, most strikingly, I liked the gesture of the tree matching the gesture of the man, "gesture" in the sense of attitude, as in a "gesture drawing." For me, the second image says more and says it more forcefully — more meaning and more expression. In this sense, the chair in the left bottom foreground I see helpful rather than, as many might feel, unneeded. Generally, my feeling is that, in judging images, our instantaneous first choice is, in most cases, likely to be the right one — the right one for ourselves, that is. Which picture do you prefer, and why? _______________ Alone in Bangkok essay on BURN Magazine