yours looks good too! just proves there are lots of ways to skin a cat.....i suck with dodge/burn and usually ruin my pics when trying to use dodge/burn.....
It is an excellent shot, the crop is really nice...you have a nice contrasty feel happening now.
Notice the cheeks, it looks like it was cold when you took this. Faces get splotchy when it is cold out when blood (vessels?) comes to the surface.
I might smooth the cheeks a bit. I tried it in psp with a Noise reduced Layer and then erased the eyes and mouth to bring sharpness of those areas back through.
If you can't do a noise reduced (I don't know PS) on a layer, try a Gaussian Blur layer @ 8 and then set the opacity of that layer somewhere around 26.
But I have to tell ya, that is a judgement call for the feel you are trying to convey. The smoothing of the cheeks looks good but also takes some of the feeling out of the shot and it starts looking more like a glamour shot.
ED: I believe Sunniee cleaned up the cheeks a bit with a little burning.
I had a go with Photoshop. Probably a little too much. Changes the feeling of the photo a lot. Hope you don't mind. It's difficult working on the small image. But it helps to start with a great capture!
And how to in Photoshop
. Reduce Noise in Neat Image
. Increase mid-tone contrast using Curves
. Use a layer mask to hide the contrast change in the eyes
. Lighten eyes: used a 50% Gray Layer, Overlay Mode, & painted them with white
. Sharpen the eyes slightly with the Sharpen Tool
