RustyBug  Offline Upload & Sell: On
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I'm rather confused by what you were striving to achieving with your cloth-covered flash in front of me triggered up that bounced off the ceiling at -3.0 EV
You say that were using the laptop for fill, but it looks to me like the laptop is your key lighting and the contribution of your strobe bounced off the ceiling is nearly negligible. The highlights on the shirt sleeves are coming from the bottom, not the top, same goes for eye socket. There's also a slight shadow being cast on your face from what looks like your nose blocking the laptop light.
I'm wondering if you had turned off your laptop, if you wouldn't have had a near silhouette, with the edge light coming from the background spill (walls, other ambient, etc.). The lighting here just doesn't make sense to me ... pp changes add to the confusion.
As to the image itself ... I think you're in "no man's land".
By that, I mean it strikes a person initially as a poorly lit, poorly focused image. Yet, the "artistic intent" isn't strong enough to tell the viewer this was intentional, and of "good control" such that they want to try and study the image for the message being sent by the artist. As the creator of our images, we always know the message better than our viewer and often times our viewer needs more help than we might otherwise think.
The almost vertical shadow (camera right) that cuts through the face/eye doesn't strike me as being there by intent/control, nor does the upward nose shadow on the face under the (camera left) eye, nor the highlights at the outer corners of the eyes.
Things like this suggest not good control, which then corroborates the initial perception of poorly lit, poorly focused, and steals from the viewer wanting to study the image for the artist's/creator's message. Instead, it looks like a hodge-podge of lighting thrown together. For a reshoot, I'd suggest going all manual (i.e. skip the -3.0 EC and just dial it in). I'd also suggest shooting one light (try all three individually to see their contribution), then adding the next one, then finally the last ... if that makes any sense. Then you can better garner control of how to merge/manage them.
I applaud the artistic effort to communicate the message, but I think you've got a few issues @ "near miss" that are conflicting your viewer too much for the message to be effectively communicated. Although, since it does come across as "confused", I could see someone making the case for that being the intent ... just that the viewer may/may not be confident of that.
HTH
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