A fellow firefighter and photographer, the subject had asked me to help him out with some studio lighting basics. I captured this image while showing him a basic edge light setup on a white sweep. I then processed it using an HDR technique and composited in a more interesting background.
At the risk of sounding like areal jerk - your background looks uprezzed rather than OOF - I have that problem with a lot of my composites too. Great lighting, but the shadows on the helmet don't seem to match up with the background. I feel mean, but I mean well.
You are right. It is uprezzed a bit. Nothing about the image was preplanned. I simply took an image that I snapped while helping out a friend with some basic studio lighting on white and threw a BG on it to make it more interesting. I never planned to turn it into a composite. If I had I would have planned it out better and probably spent significantly more time on making the shadows more believable.