I am finding the orange background just overwhelms this subject, especially since the depth of field is just so shallow. Why do I say the DOF is too shallow? Because we have a high-information subject matter, with all that beard detail, and yet the focus is "out" on the beard, and the one eye...it's like there's a lot to see, but we're not being allowed to use our eyes to see anything, just a hint of OOF detail, over the majority of the frame. I've seen tis look plled off successfully, most often with 4x5 camera sheet film photos, but those have one thing that these lack, which is a feeling of richness of information, meaning just tons and tons of fine, fine detail very clearly visible, yet with depth of field that drops off by the ears. These images lack that richness of detail...and it's hard to describe what that means, but let me try an analogy: this subject matter, a man with a scruffy new beard would benefit from being shown with millions and millions of pixels' worth of information, but these two images I am seeing look like they're 900 k in image information depth.
I'm not trying to demean your efforts. I like the idea, the approach that was used, but the final end result is not pleasing to the eye; I want to literally be able to SEE, to experience, "more information". I guess what I am saying, or trying to say, is that I crave more detail, both in terms of focus area that is within the sharpness plane, but also more micro-detail, more actual resolving of what *is still* within the focused area. Shot #2 is so fuzzy it looks almost like it's an image shot off the surface of a mirror, like it's an image of the aerial image coming off the silvering inside the front glass sheet.
