Trying to make my picture look like Ashley McNamura's photography

[xtinnna]

So I'm very new to photography and photoshop and I wanted to emulate the techniques of one of my favorite photographers, Ashley McNamura, in my own photograph of nephew.


Here is the Ashley McNamura photograph I'm trying to emulate:

Here is the original of my nephew:

Now please don't laugh at me but here's what I've done so far. (I know it looks nothing like Ashley's but bear with me because I'm new to this!!!)

Can somebody please teach me the photoshop techniques necessary to achieve the similar effect as Ashley McNamura's photo? I'm referring to the smoothness, clarity, and overall beautiful blue effect of it. I tried following a bunch of different photo editing tutorials but none seem to achieve the effect I'm looking for. Any advice will be helpful! Thank you so much!

[zona5101]

i think what i like about the photo you are trying to emulate is the big catchlights, sharpness in the eyes/face and the narrow depth of field. Even thought the color shift towards blue and the change in saturation is noticable, the image could stand on it's own without those tweaks. Always easier to start with a great image and tweak it than to take a less than optimum photo and try and force it to be something "better".

[edbayani]

zona is right. you have to have a good image to start with.
but since you asked for some techniques, you can start by adding a new layer and set the blending mode to color dodge. then with the eyedropper tool select the lightest skin tone of your image, and use a soft brush set to 5% opacity and brush slowly the dark areas of the skin. the reason for this: not to alter the lightest parts so as not to blow it out. flatten and with magic wand select the grey wall and add a little blue. the eyes do not have catchlights and seems all black but if you magnify there is a faint shape of the iris, with dodge to set to midtones and opacity 10% brush the faint shape. hope this can help you.