Agree with you on all your points. For picture 1 the background was purposely left that way as I was trying out different effects with different background. All 3 pictures were taken at about the same time in the day, and the background for pic 1 was the natural one. I blocked off part of the sun light to create the darker background for pic 2. For pic 3, I actually wanted the blown out upper right corner to contrast with the darker lower left corner, but guess I over done it. I perfers pic 2 over the others too.