Mucking around with photoshop

I am a very strong believer in peoples inner beauty, and that you don't need to change what you look like on the outside to feel better about yourself.
But if anyone does know me well, i still do it anyways because its fun!

so I've been experimenting on Photoshop and trying to get better at retouching photos, just so i can do fabulous wedding photos for people :)

 This one is the first one i was doing of myself because i needed high quality pictures.. and that's the only portrait i could find that i took with my DSLR.

I was learning how to burn and dodge on different masks.. and this is my first try. i ended up lightening my hair, which was in the way of my nose, so i ended up lighting more of my nose.. and now my nose looks odd.. but i like how my lips turned out.

Then i remembered that i took portraits of Ajay a while back for my art class, and thought i'd give it another go. 

Click photo for better view

And this is the After and before picture of Ajay's portraits. Her make up for smeared because we were working in a wet environment, and her eyes got bloodshot from getting water and make up in it.

There is so much more i should learn, and so much more practicing to do, but I'm just really happy that i managed to be able to read the tutorials broken English and figure out how its done.
it literally took 3 years to figure out wtf the chick was talking about in her tutorial. (obviously not 3 years straight.. )

hopefully with more practice I'll be able to Photoshop pictures just like they do in magazines ;)