More Photoshop fiddling

I've been going through my old photos looking for more pictures to attempt to salvage. A common theme I've noticed in my collection photographic mishaps is incorrect exposure of the subject against a much lighter background. In my defence not all of these were avoidable by a simple change in angle. After reading a tutorial on the use of level adjustment layers and masks to correct foreground/background tone, I decided to try my hand at fixing this shot from Seaworld.



Probably not the best example as the background isn't especially underexposed. Figured I would try to create a level adjustment layer and use the mask to exclude anything other than the subject and water stream. Also tried a warming filter to remove the blue tinge and cropped the image for a tighter view of the subject.



Ah well, it's not exactly night and day but my 10 minute effort has turned a crummy photo into one that's passable. Would have liked to clean up the image a bit more too but I was zoomed in all the way with my old Pro90IS, taken in crap lighting at ISO 50. Yeah I know I shouldn't blame my tools. Looks like I have lots to learn about preparing for a shot and post-processing.