John, I have to disagree with your opening. I don't think composition is the subject in most photos, nor do I think it is the most important element.(posted 8261 days ago)I find that light is far more important than composition to defining the difference between (to use your terms) aspiring vs published. I don't agree with this categorization, I think the difference between aspiring and published often has far more to do with business skills than photography. Returning to the premise, there are many great compositions that are ruined by being ill-lit, yet it is unusual to find a photograph that has great light (or lighting) that is harmed by the composition. Maybe even this is an arbitrary distinction. It is the combination of elements that make a photograph work, and composition is but one. In my mind, as I said above, not the most important one.
I am not as impressed with the work of the photographer you cite. His work looks more like an "aspiring" photographer - a bit of this, a bit of that. No style, no sense of individual vision, but commercially quite capable.
I found a book the other day in a used bookstore by a photographer I had never heard of, Milton Rogovin. He's still alive, probably in his eighties or nineties by now. The book is portraits, as was all of his photography, mostly of working class families or individuals (he was quite political about who he photographed.) Looking at his images, one gets a strong sense of the subjects, of the relationship between the subjects and the way in which they were photographed, and of Rogovin. That is missing in Doben's work.