  Longitudinal phase space analyses as introduced by van Hove provided a
simplified method of separating different reaction production mechanisms. Cuts
in the longitudinal phase space can help to select specific reaction kinematics
but also induce nonflat acceptance effects in angular distributions. We show
that in photoproduction reactions dominated by t-channel exchanges, selection
of meson or baryon production over a large mass range can be optimized through
calculating mass-dependent cut limits compared to cuts on a van Hove plot
sector alone. A cut is presented that improves this selection of one type of
hadron production by rejecting another. In addition we demonstrate that using
cuts in longitudinal phase space preserves sufficient information to reliably
extract observables from the angular distribution of the final state particles.
