eyeball, "half-cut lights" was a poor choice of word.

what aba9785 meant was distractions. and / or any other things in the picture that somewhat spoils the rest of the picture.

with the wonder of digital photography, it's good if you can crop your pictures without having distractions. if no choice, just do some photo-editing.

it's not wrong to do it as long as your purpose is correct. in your case, a little care it cropping would do the trick.

play around with Rule of Thirds, later on just breakaway from it if you want.

try to have patterns, or angles along with your object. so on so forth.