Feel free to edit away!
I'm here to learn!

I love your the colours of your first edit and the floor of your second.
I was having a go at punchy colours simply because I did the last one desaturated but you are right, it suits it much better.
Can you talk me through what you did?

As for hiring kids.... I have 4 with nothing to do for 7 weeks! Where shall I post them?

It's nothing special, just a slightly different view of the world that's all. The first was just a general desaturation of the colour with a few tweaks here and there (i have set myself up a little template that I tend to use lately). Then a little dodging and burning to bring some detail back here and there, like the eyes as I felt eye contact was important. The second was a further desaturation conversion to B&W from the first and again dodging and burning to bring detail back to the hand and fade away the floor just to see how it worked. Both pictures are slight crops to your 2nd picture as I felt it needed less floor space.

Only my attempt, there are people here with far better PP skills than me but these were just ideas. I think it's a nice pic though.

PS. As I said, the edits on my computer have a littlke more detail than those uploaded through Photobucket.

Lovely edits BC.

xx

Beginners question ... what is dodging and burning?

Not as good as BCs, but is this any better?

oops! Fiddled with flickr settings and seem to do have done something to my first 2 photos.