First attempts in Boston

I'm almost done with my first semester at an arts school in botson, and recently have been getting interested in photography, and am considering it as a minor. I went outside to play with my Rebel XT the other day, and any criticism is welcome.

1)

And i got to editing this next one, and couldn't decide which version i liked better. Any opinions?

2) Unedited Image:


3) And the corrected version:

 

It says your images are ok to edit. So I just fixed the original to what I would have done. Took about 2 minutes in Elements.

 

The first one is so dark its hard to tell what is going on also.

 

i really like what ranmyaku did with that picture.

 

What settings did you change to do that?

 

I don't remember exactly. Just levels, contrast/brightness, and hue/saturation. Nothing fancy.

 

What art school do you go to?

I've been thinking of going to school in Boston, either for education at Boston University, or for photography at MIA.

 

does the first one say something in the lights? all i see is "ham". i like #2 better than 3

 

That says a lot. Someone likes an unedited off cam pic, rather than the edited one. Which program are you using? If you are just starting out, google some video tutorials on post processing.

 

I'm at Emerson College, for whoever asked that.

And i'm just getting started and playing with the settings, so the poor white balance and whatnot are easy to fix now that i have the controls on the camera figured out.

As far as what program, i'm using photoshop CS3 off the school computers, but again i'm just learning how it works. Thanks for the ideas. And to tell you the truth i think the unedited one with the blue haze looks cooler, but that's just me.