Photo Critique

This was my first time photographing live music! I took a ton of photos that evening and this is, by far, one of my favorites.

I really enjoy the purple tones of the lighting on the backdrop. I feel like purple is a pretty uncommon color overall and I think it really makes this image pop. I like the concentrated look on the player's face like he is really focusing on nailing all the notes. I believe they were playing Gold on the Ceiling.

Another aspect of this photo that I like is the angle of the bass itself because it accentuates the depth with the leading lines of the strings and the neck of the bass. It feels like it's coming out towards the viewer.

Some things I don't like:

I feel like the background is too busy. I tried to fix a few things in Lightroom and even removed the text on the big banner behind the player, but I still feel like it's too busy.

I feel like the microphone could be removed from the image. And I would do that, but I don't like spending hours on making the removal look as perfect as possible and instead will just try to mitigate those distraction in the future when shooting other performers.

There is a pole directly behind the cord to the bass that jumps out to me and looks like crappy masking or some sort of retouching, like the cord is glowing a bit because of that. Personally, this is really distracting to me and may warrant a crop to remove that altogether.

Looking forward to your thoughts!