Trying this out

Nice Kathy! I love them! You clearly have a way to make the couple feel comfortable and open up! I love the emotion in these shots.

Thanks Bryan, Maybe if I posted a self portrait you would see why my clients are always laughing

Oh comon! That's harsh! LOL

But hey - that's why I play behind the camera not in front of it LOL

Kathy, you are soo fitting in this place!! Love your second set of e-session images! You do solid work for sure!

Okay, 2 more and I'll quit. This is another couple that will wed in Aug. She was quite a devil, but he got even! These are not the greatest quality technically but they're cute so I thought I'd share.

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Wow, you are amazing... you sure can bring out the happiness in these couples. I can't wait to see your weddings!!

Thank you all again! I am looking forward to these weddings too, I love fun people! I'll be sure and share them.

Kathy

Kathy, here's something you can start with - and something that Scott Kelby do talk about in his book.

Make a duplicate layer of the background layer (Cmd-J or Ctrl-J if you're on a PC).
In the Layers palette, go to the blending modes, there's a popup menu there that says "Normal" and you are going to choose "Soft Light".
You'll see that the contrast will increase pretty much, actually so much that the blacks in his shirt is starting to close - so to open that up - go to the part in the Layers palette that says "Opacity" - lower it to about 60% and his shirt will come back, but you'll still have a good contrast image.
To me the image also looks a little blue in this picture, so I open up an adjustment layer, but you can do either that or go through the Image menu and choose Levels. If you choose to use an adjustment layer and you go too far, you can always use the opacity slider to lower the effect later in the process.
The adjustment layers are hidden under the round icon at the bottom of the layers palette that looks like almost a Yin Yang symbol, there in the popup menu you now choose "Levels".
In the Levels palette grab the grey pipette from the bottom of the dialog and click with it somewhere on his arm to see if you can warm up the image a bit - just click around if you don't find the right spot (I were clicking somewhere under his elbow).
If you're now happy with your adjustments and want to save, you just use the layer palette (again!) and in the upper right corner you will find another menu (a little arrow icon) and that lets you "Flatten image" - then just choose Save as and make sure you save the image with a color profile (in my case sRGB).

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Wow Kathy! I absolutely LOVE those last 2 photos!

Hilarious! You have a great gift at bringing out their true personalities! I'd love to see some of your weddings!

If I were you, I'd pursue reading that book. I've read it, and it's invaluable. Alternatively, pick up Scott Kelby's "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom" book. Lightroom is much easier to ease into than Phososhop imo, and I personally prefer it for dealing with RAWs.

Thanks for the comments and fix-ups, they look much better than my post.

Petra, Wow, you are a wonderful instructor. I really appreciate your patient detailed walk through and I'm going to try it today and see what I can do.

Howzitboy, the kewl frame came from a kewl 2nd hand store. I have several different ones for different occasions.

Bryan, Yea I guess I better read the books. I really do love to learn new things, I'm just always so darn busy that I put off and just wing it to often.

Welcome Kathy - you have some real emotion going on in these shots - beautiful.

Thank you, these are some great couples, lots of emotion, lots of fun, they deserve most of the credit, I'm just fast with my trigger finger

Kathy - let's see more!

great work all around.
mark