your opinion please

I've been at 800East this week, Ken Gregory's recording studio, with Jim, who is ready to release his new jazz album. Yesterday I took 310 photos of Jim at the piano in various poses. We're hoping one of these photos will become the cover of the new CD, which is titled "I'm in the Twilight of a Mediocre Career." He's not. :>

I've shot the cover of this CD, and this one, and this one. You can take a look, to see what we've done and what we're going for (and you can listen to Jim's tunes, too!).

There are only so many ways you can shoot a piano player at the piano... or are there? The outtakes are hilarious, but I'll save those for later. For now, here are some of the cover shots we're considering. Tell us what you think, please -- write, or leave a vote in the comments!

1. Jim wants a shot of him playing the piano, but this seems too busy to me:
2. He really wants black and white, and we'd have to photo-shop that rug out of the picture. And there's no piano (and too much sunlight on the cheek, I think):
3. Too dark, but it could be lightened:
4. Too light, but it could be darkened (and I don't like the headphones, but Jim wanted some with headphones):
5. I'm not sure what we saw in this, but we marked it:
6. I like the play of the sunlight here:
7.... and here (and there's a goodly swatch for text to go in the piano top):8. I dunno about this one (but Jim likes it):
9. This is our current favorite:
That's a few of them... I think maybe the strongest ones. What thinkest thou? And thanks for your opinion. This is Jim's strongest work yet -- we're excited about it! Photos of the band at work, coming up when we start to make the inside collage in a couple of weeks....