Ok ok... Thank you!
My dad used to do some professional photography, and taught me most of what i know. Then a couple classes and some books helped polish my technique a little more. Plus i learned on SLRs while burning silver, so ya made sure you liked it before dropping the shutter. You had 32 frames a roll, make it count, and you're paying to develop them, so no double checking to see if you liked it!
The biggest thing when shooting models is getting the perspective right. I found until you get the feel for that scale, it helps to have a scale figure available. You want your cameras 'eye' to be the same height as theirs. Scale 4 to 7 feet tall is good, too far outside that and it gets 'artsy' like some car magazines, or like you're working off a boom/uphill/drone.
Shooting cars side or 3/4 shots, frame more space 'moving forward' so they have somewhere to go. It looks wrong cropping a car closer to the front. Kinda like portraits are slight offset with more room the way they're looking.
Trying to crop things out of backgrounds and maintain law of thirds is usually my sticking point unless i can pose absolutely everything. I'm still trying to learn the rules about making construction stuff look awesome.
Googlie Eyes for the win!
So we're getting lights now! Bullet turnsignals are 3mm leds. Headlights will get a filler plate and take 5mm leds. Taillights are getting shaved, redone as 61-earlier round with 5mm leds.
Headlight lens is front of a googlie eyeball, then i made a couple more bigger ones into Baby Moons to make my wheels look a little better.