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!
Very good. I’d crop it closer to the musician, since there is too much empty space above his head anyways.
You’re the second one to suggest cropping, so I’m definitely leaning that way too! Thank you for taking the time to comment. I really appreciate it!
I don’t know a lot about photography but it is good to look at.
Thanks so much for the comment! Stick around and maybe you can learn some more :)
I sometomise borrow my friend’s camera and I would love to learn from the community
That’s awesome! Is there a certain style you’d like to try or a specific photo that inspires you?
I don’t know my style yet but I like the merge between organic and modern. Like a photo of a room with big windows and white walls covered in vines and plants
I think I have a photo you may like then. I’ll write up another post about it!
I really want to see it let me know when you post it. (I slept sorry for responding late)
The best thing you can do is take as many pictures as you can and try different things to see what you like and don’t like in terms of composition, framing, lighting, etc.
I forgot to mention the specs of the photo itself so here goes:
Camera: Sony A7iii
Lens: Sony FE 50mm f1.8
Aperture: f1.8
Shutter-speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
There is a solution for the things you don’t like: crop them off. You would lose a part of th instrument, but the focus would be on his face and he would look into the photo instead of out of it.
I’ll give that a try and see how I like it. I didn’t really want to cut off any of the guitar. But I’ll try it!
