Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

More about burning. Thank you, Paul Carpenter. 

Burning and Dodging

Advanced Photoshop Tutorials by Jay Kinghorn, April 2009 (updated August 2009)

Layer Masks | Smart Objects | Advanced Masking | Image Sharpening | Burning and Dodging
Ansel Adams did it, you know you probably should too, but you may be wondering why burning and dodging is such a beloved tool of the masters. Fear not, this tutorial will help you take control of burning and dodging by explaining the aesthetics of burning and dodging and providing the technical know-how to transform knowledge into action.

What is Burning and Dodging?

Let’s start with the basics—burning and dodging is really nothing more than darkening (burning) and lightening (dodging) specific areas within a print. While the traditional darkroom used a host of esoteric tools and odd hand gestures to manipulate the amount of light applied to a print, you’ll primarily use the brush, burn and dodge tools in Photoshop. If you’re working in Lightroom or Aperture, your selective adjustment tools will perform essentially the same task, even though the commands will be slightly different.
Though the tools for burning and dodging are easily accessible in Photoshop, as Ansel Adams clearly articulates in the following quote, the effect these corrections can have on your image is far more grandiose. “Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships.”
Burning and dodging helps to give your photos life and vibrancy. The care you take in burning and dodging your photos is a part of what separates your best photos from all the rest in your collection.
Burning and dodging is most commonly used to add shadows or light to specific areas within a photo to help guide a viewer’s eye through your composition. It is used to improve the appearance of textures or shapes within a photo, or provide tonal separation between specific areas within a photo.
Most often, I’ll dodge areas I want the viewer’s eye to linger on a little longer or burn shadows to improve the depth of a photo.
The concept of burning and dodging is a direct extension of the artistic concepts of chiaroscuro, a term used to describe both the global contrast between light and dark within a painting (or photo) as well as the regional contrasts within a painting or photo to give a sense of depth or volume to three-dimensional objects.