My eye is naturally attracted to the brightest part of the image straight away. Because most of us read from left to right our natural inclination is for us to move across an image in the same way, but in your first image I need to move my view in the opposite direction to find the focal point of the image so I keep sliding back to the out of focus flame. Therefore I prefer the second where I see the flame first then move right to rest on the focal point. I have no idea whether this is true (but opposite) for cultures that read from right to left or indeed up and down
