wow, i woke up and read all the posts and really appreciate everyone's encouragement! i've been rather how to say... "unimpressed" with my work, i really needed a lift, thank you all so much!!
wheniam: those are very stong encouraging words, thank you! well, i just bought a new lens and this is gonna be the one that i'll be using for years! afs17-35. used to use a 12-24 in my other series' but have decided to go 17-35 from now.
iamasaint: this is indeed an hounour, coming from you, as your works are totally excellent too! thanx for the heads up!
nightwolf75: no lar..! we're all still learning, certainly i. gotta keep working hard! as for the colour part on b/w, yes there are certain ways, my preferred way is to use history brush, as hptay mentioned. first desaturate ur image with ur preferred way (either using desat command, or channel mixer, or using lab colour but make sure u convert back to rgb). after that go to ur history window, and click the box on the left of the state that it was just b4 it got converted to b/w. click on the history brush and "paint back" the parts u want in colour. essentially, setting the history state with the click in the history window makes the brush paint the part back to that state. hmm.. hope u're not too confused after my lengthy explanation.. ;p
w.s: ahah this was actually a "screw up". had my flash on, but my x-sync wasn't high enuff, so the came released at 1/125. hence the over-exposed background. but i thot a little high key here and there is ok lar...
if u noticethe bluish part on the bottom left, it's becos the walls are warm in colour, and the flash made the couple look very warm, so after colour correction, (minus red in curves, colour balance) the whites will turn blue. i could mask out everything except the couple so the walls stay white, but i thot this was pretty cool.