Thank you for your comments. I like what you did with the photo - it completely changes the mood of the shot.
You will notice that none of my photos have been manipulated in Photoshop or any other application. For starters, I don't have those programs yet, but my primary medium is black & white, so my tendency is not to alter the photos. I am hoping that some time this year (2006) I will get a "real" digital SLR-type camera and all the goodies. We'll see what happens at that time.