Welcome Smitty in the forum.
I was looking your first photo more times and it has some ‘magic’.
As been said above about sharpness is true. It should be more…. but the idea is good.
I would take the shot to keep the hand and the shoe with smoke as a focus point.
In my case both – right place and moment.
For example:
when I do landscape shots, I walk around and try to find the place where from the photo will be the best and wait for the right light, clouds…..
when I did music photos, I chose the place to shoot from and was waiting for good expresion of the artist.
other photos, like birds, I just wait for the right moment but still I choose the right place.
Are these answers ‘satisfy’ you a little bit?
If you ever see a pro taking shots for a brochure you’ll be astonished at the work and preparation that goes into getting a dozen natural, unstaged-looking, clear, sharp, correctly-exposed photos. I spent one day on a shoot like this, and I started off with a “how can this bloke charge a grand a day?” attitude and ended with a “how come this bloke doesn’t charge more” attitude.