editing process of "keep you sheltered from the storm that's raging on"

Woot, this is my first explanation of how I edited one of my photos. The process of how I edited this photo is basically the same for every square picture I create. I start off with 2 or 3 images, merge them together, edit the colours via curves and voila!

The first step I did was take the main picture of myself, then expanded the frame to the left and right. This resulted in the following three images:

These images were then edited in RAW, which resulted in the following:

In RAW, I bumped up the exposure by 1/3, added some fill light, and increased the brightness. These were all very minor adjustments but make a huge difference.

After editing in RAW, I placed these images together and essentially did the Brenzier method. I blended the images together in a square canvas to create the final product. I then used the patch tool, clone stamp and healing brush to remove some minor distractions such as the tiny specks of lens flares.

As my last step, I edited the colours using curves as I felt the lights were too bright and were taking away from the image. I also wanted to add more intimacy to the final product, so I added more warmth and darkened the background.

Voila! Very simple editing but it makes all of the difference. I hope you enjoyed my thought process. If you have any questions, just leave a message in the comments.

P.S I didn't realize that the before images were such terrible quality. I'll make sure to change that next time!