Lackadaisical (kid pic)

[rufus5150]

I was going through my recent batch of photos and this one didn't come up as one I wanted to do anything with after the first couple of flagging passes. I didn't like the 'lazy' eyes but the rest of the image was bright, sharp, and colorful. In some (likely misguided) way, I made an attempt to stylize it and perhaps rescue it from the depths of my backup drives, trying to match the overall image to the expression from her eyes.

After the normal edits (a bit of sharpening, healing brush, slight eye work and a bit of dodging) I applied some curve work, some vertical grain noise and desaturated the whole thing a bit -- not in that particular order. I waffled on the vignette but decided for it after going back and forth about a dozen times.

Any comments and criticisms are, of course, welcome. I would definitely welcome thoughts on the post processing.

And for reference, here is the original image after just a few retouches to get rid of eye boogers and whatnot:

 

[Senor Hound]

This photo is really good. Is there any way to post it without the vertical grain? Or maybe with some random grain instead? I get this feeling while looking at it that it needs something horizontal to go with the vertical grain. I don't know why.