B Boy Cuties...one more

Back in the day when I first fell head over heels in love with photography and was shooting film, I also fell in love with the darkroom. In highschool, Mr. Cooper - my first photography teacher who has forever left a mark in my memory as the wonderful, grumpy, secretly heart-of-gold photography teacher, would open the darkroom after hours and on weekends for a few of us photo geeks. We'd lose ourselves in the quiet serenity of the darkroom, exposing our negatives and then watching our images magically emerge in the tubs of chemcials lined up production-style down the middle of the lab. I used to thirst for those hours - there was nothing quite as rewarding as eagerly walking those images out into the light and seeing the final result of all your hard work (or quite as frustrating when, after all that work, you'd discover a speck of dust or lint you'd missed on your negative which was now showing up as a lovely spot on your photo - I don't miss that!).
For this reason, I once swore I'd never make the switch to digital. And when I did, it was a painful, slow transition. Now, if asked, I'd tell you just as fiercely that I'll never go back to film (unless, of course, it's my only option :)). I'm completely, 100% in love with digital photography. To me, taking the pictures is just the first step. Processing is the second and it's as much a part of the artistic process as taking the photos themselves. I know some photographers don't care for the post-processing aspect of digital photography, but I love it. I look forward to it as much as I do the session. There are some standard processes I run on all images but after that, it's all about the individual session - the light, the colors, the subjects, the style...deciding what processes to apply at this stage is like artistic candy to me.
In any case, here's one more of these cute boys and a little fun processing I added. Hope everyone is having a wonderful Memorial Day!