I have very few images of Jacob as a newborn. That is because two months after he was born, I dropped a cup of coffee onto my laptop. Back-up copies? Yeah, I'd made a backup. Right before he was born. Blech.
Five years ago, I liked snapping pictures but neither did I have a good camera (yet), nor did I know anything about photography. I had no idea what I was doing.
A recent exercise that I came up with for myself is to take one random photo off my hard drive and edit it. Some pictures are so bad, nothing can be done for them. Some can be improved upon, some turn out to be treasures.
The following is one of the few pictures I have a Jacob at that age. I could not turn it into a treasure - those highlights are just blown, baby. I didn't even know what RAW was back then, and I remember I put this plush animal into his hands because someone gave it to us and I wanted them to see that he likes it. Why, why? Flash and white fake fur! Not a good combination. And why the flash? I have no idea what I was thinking. Nothing, apparently.
For the photoshop pros: I adjusted the color balance with curves, pulling it slightly into the magenta. That took the flash induced waxiness and the blue color cast out of his skin. I adjusted the hightlights, also with curves, and masked off everything but his face and the plush toy. I sharpened the face with high pass, and masked off most of the skin, leaving the eyelashes and his mouth. (Such a pouty mouth! He still has those bee-stung lips. Any woman would kill for those.)
While I don't love the picture (that toy!), and the compostion isn't wonderful, it's much better now, with just two or three minutes of editing. Now I can look at it without cringing (too much).
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