Self shot. Head shot

Please critique me on these. I am using a home studio setup with hensle lights. I had a large octobox front left (reversed image horizontally in lightroom) with a middle size softbox in back as a kicker. bother were slightly higher then me. Tried to get rim light effect. I don't have a strip box, so this is the best I could do.

Please critique. a lot of my friends did not like the non smile version.

I like the high contrast look also.

Really like your lighting esp the light spilling from your left shoulder....defines your neck and jaw-line well. Unfortunately, you have gone in too close to appreciate your setup esp in your 1st image...cropping at the edge/tip of the jaw is not a good idea.
BTW not sure if the focus is good in these...try sharpening a bit.

I like shot #1 better.

the backlight on camera right is a bit distracting.

Agree the crop may be a bit too tight.

Both "looks" [contemplative and smiling] work.

Eyes look a little bit soft in #1...looks like the eyebrows caught the sharpest focus. Also, if #1 is not a crop already, you can address the crop at the jawline by going in a bit tighter. I can't tell what you are looking at in the first one, but it might be something that is too close...I'm detecting a slight cross-eyed look that does not appear in the second one.

How do you work out the focus? It's very close (and difficult) with the shallow DOF you are working with.

Those are actually cropped in Lightroom. Both are wider pictures. I have my camera on tripod across basement with 70-200 f2.8 roughly at 130 ish. I am playing around and trying to find right ration for the back light to just light up rim light on my back.

I was watching some kelby training stuff just playing around with lights and I was trying to get eyes just right. Not to much white. I like the looking in camera better.

Also on the sharpening. I did sharpening around 100-110, but I turned up masking pretty high if I remember. Just to get hair sharp, but not to sharpen skin to much. I have clarity up some also. Maybe I should turn down the masking on the sharpening.

Thanks for the help