One more try

This weekend's challenge was Wisdom, for which I submitted this. I wasn't entirely happy with it, mostly because it just looked washed out. I took it too dark, and then the picture I took with better settings wasn't great because the woman I was photographing didn't smile. Here are the two original shots:



As you can see, the first is too dark and it's pretty poorly cropped. The second shot--which I took with the camera's automatic setting--is exposed better, but the woman isn't smiling and the crop still isn't great. What can I say--photography's hard, especially when carrying a squirming child who loves nothing more than to eat dirt the moment she's placed on the ground. Anyway, I cropped the first photo and played with the colors and contrast to make the woman's face more visible, then ran an "old photo" filter in gimp to give it a sepia tone. The filter also made the picture fuzzier, which I didn't like, but also didn't know what to do.

Today I came across this article on making better black and whites. Being relatively unsatisfied with the product I'd put out on Sunday, I played with the two photos more today. Here's what I've got:



Comments?