Now it's time for you to practice your delicate painting skills with a mouse. Choose the Eraser tool (in Photoshop Elements, it's the eighth tool from the bottom of the toolbar) and set the size in the Tool Options palette at the top of the screen. The goal is to use the tool to completely erase the photo except for the shadow area that we want to correct. That means you can use a relatively large brush to make fast, sweeping erasures across most of the photo, and then switch to a smaller brush as you get closer to the shadow itself. Be careful to feather into the darker areas without erasing too much of it--but keep in mind that if you don't erase enough, you'll see an ugly bright halo in the finished photo.

you see what my photo looks like after I've erased around the sailor.

Now, use the Brightness/Contrast tool to bring out the highlights in the shadowy areas. Choose Enhance, Adjust Lighting, Brightness/Contrast. As you increase the brightness and reduce the contrast, you should see relatively more exposure and detail in the sailor's uniform. When you're happy with the result, click OK.

Finally, turn the bottom layer back on by clicking the eye. If the effect is a bit too much, you can fine-tune the shadow exposure by lowering the top layer's opacity (in the Layer Palette, select the top layer and drag the opacity slider until you like the result).