Critique my non firearm pic thread / General camera tips?

[Eurodriver]

Hope this is allowed for those of us who take non-firearm photos to get Stick's (and others) input? ;)

I've got a Sony A6000 that I enjoy using to take photos with. I cannot figure out how to fix the lighting.

I have black tires and black wheels and when I take pictures of my vehicle the wheels always look like a shadow. This is the absolute best I've ever done and that's after enhancing the image.

http://i1328.photobucket.com/albums/w521/6234987u02/DSC03969_zpse7gzijju.jpg

It's not just the vehicle though. I can never seem to get the lighting right in any of my shots. I've honestly had better luck with photos using my iphone 7 than this thing. There are so many settings on the A6000, but I have no idea what I'm doing. I keep it in the "superior" auto setting which is a nice way of saying point and shoot.

Advice?

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

42535

I'll jump in so you can see how not to do it. Your wheels have almost no data in them so punching up zeros is hard on a jgp. When you have dark shadows and the setting sky like that, that is tough. I think the pros would put slave flashes under the car to get some light under there- or maybe a fill flash over to the left to help give some definition without blowing the white truck highlights. I think I saw some clipping of highlights there also.

I used Lightroom rather crudely to boost the shadows and the black point to get the tires a bit and tried some dodging around the tires on exposure to get them a bit to open up. RAW format gives you more latitude to work.

Next time get just a bit higher to get some separation between the roof and the bridge so you don't get the world's biggest roof rack look.

Stick can probably tweak it so well that it looks like a G-wagon.

[Stickman]

Hope this is allowed for those of us who take non-firearm photos to get Stick's (and others) input?



If you want a critique for non firearm pics, please post in the other thread and ask for people to give you feedback. I mentioned in different thread that I didn't want to have things turn into a "how to take pictures" thread or topic. Too many hurt feelings from people for a variety of reasons, so I'll leave it at that.

I'm going to close this thread up, and like I said, just ask for a critique in the other thread.