Burning Photo Challenge - San Antonio Missions

Photo Challenge #7 from JABlogspost

I'm Burning For You!  For this challenge we will be trying out the classic photography method of Burning In.  In the old days of film, this technique was used during developing to darken areas of the film selectively.  One would basically hold a tinted or opaque card with central clear area over the developing film--allowing more light to hit a specific area of the print and hence more exposure.  This resulted in a darker or "burned in" area where you want it.  Now with photo editing programs one can imitate this effect with much less trial and error.  So this week take a picture--preferably one where the contrast isn't as great as you would like it--and use this technique to add more contrast or shadow to select areas of the photo.  

I chose to use some photos from a winter trip to San Antonio where we visited some of the missions.  I took these shots with a Kodak Easyshare (not my preference but I left my Canon at home) so I didn't have the control I wanted when I took them.  All edits were done with Picasa.

This is the original and it seemed a bit washed out.

I added some basic shadow to the picture and think it creates a great contrast.

Again in this original it seemed to lack contrast.

I purposely over did it a bit on the shadow to make the cross stand out.

This original wasn't too bad but I wanted to see what adding some shadow would do.

Bringing in the shadow brought in just a bit more contrast
and I really liked thesilhouette result on the tree.