hahah good work!
On the CC side, you hav ethe right idea I think its just a case of tweaking the levels of the highlights and mids as there is a bit of a glow going on but its all trial and error and once you do it a few times you get to know what levels to do etc
the way I work it (after having a chat with a mate who does photography for a living and he talked me through his work process) is breaking the image down
so for instance, a layer for the hair, shirt, Tie, beard, skin and eyes
this way you can really tweak and play around with each element and not blowing other parts of the image, hope that helps and makes sense dude
