There's mechanics and there's art.
Mechanics involves how to get right exposure (automatic on modern cameras), sharp image, colors to match what you want to produce, etc.
Art part is what you want in your image: how should lines, shapes and colors align. Think of it as art -- what an artist would need to think. What parts you want to focus, what to blur, where to deviate from reality and how much (since photo is always different from reality).
In my experience, I figured that if you keep the two separate, it was easier to learn. As Ansel Adams implied in one of his books on photography, a pianist's fingers move on the piano fluently. He doesn't need to usually think (in modern, think keyboard
). However, that doesn't produce great melodies...
Some quick tips:
* If you're doing stills (when the car is not moving), it's best to use a tripod. That stabilizes the camera, esp. if you shoot in low lights.
* If you set the camera to full program mode (or auto?) the backgrounds may blur. To increase depth of field, you can try to use the aperture setting directly. Change it to get more or less depth of field -- you will figure what you like.
* Try and test various color settings on your camera. With DSLR, the advantage is you can try many pics to figure out what works best.
* Never under estimate the ISO setting -- the higher the ISO, the more grain you'll have. So if you use tripod, try ISO 50 or 100 if you have it on your camera. If not, then you'll have to try to get speed to somewhere between 1/30 to 1/250 depending on how stable your hand is -- 1/250 usually gets sharp images in most cases.
If you want motion, that's a different game altogether. I haven't done that much, so I can't offer much.
The art part is where you need to forget all of the above and look in the frame and ask "does this delight me?" If not, then change and try again... practice makes perfect... At least, that's what I tried and figured the best way to learn.
More importantly, when I decided I was in it for learning photography as well, I enjoyed a lot more than when I was focused on getting the right pictures all the time. I got a lot of good photos too (although I mostly shot landscapes/nature...)