Eel shot evaluation

Ok, here's a series of three shots I got of a fairly compliant eel. Shot with a 14-54 lens (4:3 system) zoomed in to its closest, clearly not macro, but good light and good colored background. It was patient enough I got several shots at it and this is what I settled on from the ones I did get. I have my opinion of what I liked best, but would like to hear from the pros.

First shot, 'side view':

Second shot, 'angled' view:

Third shot, 'facing' view:

None of these are crops (although I'm not adverse to doing so if it would make them better shots). Linking to 'medium' resizings by Flickr although bigger are available. To me the medium size loses detail and looks 'dark' compared to the larges, but I don't want to stretch the forum too much.

Only processing was RAW development in the Oly software and a bit of exposure compensation so far. Tried not to overcompress the JPEGs for upload but do have the original RAW and TIFFs if I need to correct some artifacting or other artificialness...

First which would you consider the best 'pose', and second what suggestions would you have for similar shots in the future? Lower stop to fuzz the background more, shoot closer and forget the background, lighting angle, everything is fair game.

My opinion

2. is the best pose from the Eel

3. lighting appears to be better, nice shadows and a foreground .. i also like seeing the orange chrinoid.

but if you want to try it a crop closer to the el in 2 would be awesome i feel.

I think maybe 3 looks most promising. Cropping it tight would give it more impact, I think. Or next time, get close in to the eel and fill the frame. I love photographing eels, they can be very dramatic subjects from most angles. I would crop all 3 tight and see how they look. Thanks for posting.

Unfortunately because there is no contrast between the eel and the background, the eel is lost in the background. I think the way to make this photograph work is to get in close, so that the white mouth becomes the key focal point.