Hi Dean,
Photography is all about communication. In this particular photograph I feel that the viewer's eye is being drawn along the road and up to that bright sky, but along the way we are ignoring the burnt trees.
To remedy this I think it is worth darkening the road and the sky while at the same time working to add more contrast and detail to the trees themselves.
There are several ways you can do this and ideally I would start with the RAW file if that is how you captured the image. With the quick edit of the JPEG below though, I used the Lasso tool to select the road and sky, then used a Curves adjustment layer to darken the sky (all you need to do is drag the middle of the curve sideways to do this).
If you use the Dodge and Burn tools, make sure you select the tonal range that you want to target. In Photoshop you have the choice to adjust the Highlight, Midtone and Shadow tones. (And don't forget to adjust the size of your brush to suit the area that you are working on).
I used the Burn Tool with the range set to Highlights to darken the sky some more and then I proceeded to use a mix of Dodge and Burn (with the ranges set to Midtone or Shadow as required) to tease more information out of the trees.
This is an image where you really need to let the trees do some talking for themselves.
Hope this is a help, Anthony.
Slow Recovery - Image Doctor's edited version
