Burning and Dodging

Burning and dodging is an extremely simple way to add focus to a person or an object in a photo by simply lightening it and darkening everything else around it giving it that "less important" effect.  When I think of this, I think about how a performer is on stage and while you can see the musicians and background singers in the back, the lights are often muted on them tremendously while the performer receives their time in the spotlight!

Here is a great example:

This scene from Times Square in NYC shows a beautifully decorated tree while people ice skate below.

By using dodge and burn which simple involved adding a new layer going up to edit, fill (or shift 5) and select 50% gray.  You will then need to copy this layer and rename one "dodge" and the other "burn".  You will notice that each has covered up your original photo.  You will now set your blending mode to "Overlay" on each.  For this example I changed the opacity to 50% so that it wasn't an instant and major change.

First I highlighted the tree.  Using your dodge layer, select your brush tool and click X to ensure that your in your color pallet your white is on top of the black.  Now, paint over the tree and anything you want to highlight.

To shade or darken, you will go to your burn layer.  Click X to ensure that the black is on top of the white in your color pallet and do the same as you did before but this time to darken.

As I was using this technique (especially with this photo), I was able to not only make the tree stand out more, but I was also able to give the affect of the light reflecting off of the building to the left as well as to make it appear that this took place much later in the day.