direction needed

[rward78]

From misc

Before I begin, I apologize if I have this in the wrong place or if this is not allowed. This picture was snapped at my nieces graduation, right as I was fixing to run out of power...I just happened to turn around and catch this shot at the right time.
I don't know how to use my photoshop well (o.k.,pretty much not at all) and I can't afford to have somebody work on it...was wondering how I would go about blurring and blending some of the background out so that I just capture my niece & b-i-l? Any pointers on where to start...also any suggested tutorials would be great! I need the dumbed down version because I really have no art background nor do I possess any creative abilities....:

Model: NIKON D90
ISO: 800
Exposure: 1/60 sec
Aperture: 4.0
Focal Length: 55mm
Flash Used: Yes

[Niresangwa]

The good thing is they're exposed better than the rest fo the shot you're trying to get rid of. I"m not going to try anything on a small file size as it will end up looking mucky, but INitially, I'd recrop it, then use a levels adjustment and some judicious burning and blurring, rather than trying to apply a uniform fake bokeh.

It can be done, just takes some time.

Start with a crop to eliminate as much waste as you can bear. Then try playing with the levels adjustment layer..if you move the black point towards the center you'll notice the background darkens significantly faster than the subjects because it's already underexposed...

[IABoomer]

First, nice capture of a moment. I think a simple vertical crop tight on the two of them will reduce most of the distraction, possibly enough that you wouldn't need to mess with blurring the background.

As an example, I cropped this to 4x6 and added a little contrast in the tone curve using Lightroom. A 5x7 or 8x10 would probably be better since they're a bit wider and you could get rid of a bit of that sky.