Which picture should I enter in the county fair?

Question

Which picture should I enter in the county fair?
Hi. I am going to be entering some photography in the county fair of my cat.

Answer

Ok, you are getting a lot of very poor answers here, sorry folks. Just looking at a cute cat is not good photography critique. Both these photos have very real problems, and you are going to be really disappointed if there are some knowledgeable judges at the county fair. brbrThe first photo is WAY WAY overexposed. There is no detail in the cats fur. It is totally blown out. Unfortunately, blown out highlights like that cannot be recovered.brbrSo that leaves the second photo. It is actually not a bad shot, but there is also a problem with it. You made the mistake that is the glaring sign of an amateur that does not understand exposure. The scene is UNDEREXPOSED. The snow, and cat, are BLUE. Do you know why? It is because you are letting the camera auto expose. Any in camera meter tries to bring a scene to a middle tone level, know as grey. What this does is underexpose bright scenes such as snow. You have to know to add about two stops of exposure in snow conditions in order to have the proper white of the snow.brbrThe second photo can likely be helped a lot in Photoshop with a simple increase of the midtone slider in the LEVELS adjustments. This would take the blue out and increase the brightness. Also, a reduction of the blue channel in the Hue Saturation adjustment would help.brbrSo my answer is neither photo is good as they are now. The first is a total loss due to the blown highlights, and the second would only be usable with the proper levels adjustments in editing.brbrsteve