Edit Me Challenge

Edit Me Challenge Week 1 (of 2012)!
The photo was tough, and I think I did a decent edit, but I missed it.......
I was going to submit on Saturday, but forgot. :-/

Anyway, here's the original and my edit:

I am not good at fixing lighting on my own photos, let alone this one. Look at that brightness! :o

This edit was the hardest I can recall ever doing. I tried SO hard to bring out the face, but failed (however, I see now that I did better than quite a few submissions, and the only one with a really good face uses CS5. Cheater! lol, jk). My methods here used contrasting, hue change, and a lot of small work you won't notice, hehe.

Main advantages of mine over the others? The sun spots!! I manually removed all of the main ones and de-colored the others, which makes it a very good edit in my opinion.
Main drawback? The face. I couldn't bring it out. the gal with Photoshop even made the eyes an awesome blue when you can't even tell in the original photo! :-P

Anyway, I hope to try again soon, and I would like any and all comments about this edit.