Thanks everyone for the comments!
Who said flare is bad? I control the sun :ohnoes
Since you brought it up, here are the original images - straight from the camera, no editing other than an image resize and watermark added so Julio Gonzalez won’t be tempted to claim the shots are his.
2010 Nissan GTR - Original, not edited by -KillerBlackbird-, on Flickr
2010 Nissan GTR - Original, not edited by -KillerBlackbird-, on Flickr
Notice the absence of glare on the front lip? Its there but ever so slightly. What I wanted to do was increase it so you notice it enough and to give the sun presence and a location. It also “warms” the image up so when you view it, you can tell the sun was out and you get a feel for the temperature - warm. If you could imagine yourself in the photo and you turned around, the sun would be there. Clearly by looking at the edited version, we can see the sun is at our back, you’re standing at just the right level to get glare off the carbon front lip. Leaving it the way it was originally - its just a glow, not interesting and probably should’ve been removed all together. I could’ve added a huge sun on the side, in the trees, and that would’ve looked like shit since the reflection is on the front of the car and not the side I would’ve had an unexplained dual sun photo (Chemtrails, UFO’s, OMG, :ohnoes).
In the parking garage I went with colder tones to do just the opposite, obviously it was dark out when I shot and no natural light exists so I gave each image a very very light cyanotype hue and I wanted a “dirtier” feel to each shot, hence why I didn’t remove the garbage on the floor in PS.
2010 Nissan GTR - Original, not edited by -KillerBlackbird-, on Flickr
As you can see in the original the walls look “soft” and overall not a very flattering image.
The rig shot, yes, its terrible. I took another similar to it two weeks ago that I cant share yet that came out perfect.
I know I am far from anything great, I never claim to be the best, but the more you shoot the more comfortable you get with situations and how to tackle them. I’m not looking to impress anyone but myself and while I do this for enjoyment and slight compensation there is a ton of time involved in what you see. There is about 5 hours of editing in the video and about 10 hours in the photos alone, this doesnt include drive time, shooting time, etc. I could go on for a while ranting about it, but Im wayyyy past the TL;DR status as it is.