Shoe photography

I was given the assignment of picking an image of a pair of shoes from the Pinterest.com website and then duplicating that shot. The shot at left is the image I chose. The image below is my attempt at re-creating that shot.

For the most part the two images are identical except for the obvious difference in shoe styles and colour. I tried to duplicate the background as much as possible but encountered a busier backdrop than the original.

At first I tried shooting at f2.8 so as to completely blur out the background but this resulted in too shallow of a depth of field and the shoes weren't as sharp along the edges as I liked. I ended up shooting at f5.0 and while the resulting background was a little cluttered for my liking the shoes were acceptably sharp along most of their length.