Exercise - Focus with a set aperture

For this exercise I have created a scene using bottles at different distances from the camera on a black piece of card. I set the camera up on a tripod then set the aperture to the lowest setting (which in this case was f/3.6).

This first photo the focus was on the bottle to the rear which made the other two bottles progressively out of focus the nearer to the camera they got.

This second photo focused on the bottle in the foreground which made the bottles behind progressively more out of focus the further they moved away from the camera.






In this exercise I would have to say that I preferred the first photo focusing on the rear bottle. I like the way that my eye is drawn along the line of out of focus bottles to the sharp bottle in the background and although the first bottle is much larger it is the rear bottle that dominates the picture.
This being said I would probably prefer the second photo under different circumstances - for example a small aperture when doing a portrait which would give a sharp crisp face against a soft background. I am interested to see what results I would get using a small aperture with landscapes. Will have to give that a go at some time.