Nice light through clouds from bike path in Hadley

A few weeks ago, I was pedaling back from Amherst on the bike path in the late afternoon, and stopped at a road crossing in Hadley to take a photo -- actually several photos -- of some clouds off to the west dramatically pierced with shafts of sunlight. I put them together into this partial panorama.



While the lighting in this image pretty much captures the scene as it was, and encapsulates that sense (at least for me) of too-early dusk and the feeling of approaching winter that one gets here in early to mid-November, I was also a bit disappointed that much of the landscape was rendered too darkly, obscuring a wealth of detail. So I decided to do a little "quick and dirty" Photoshop manipulation with a fast selection and use of the "Brightness/Contrast" image adjustment menu, which gave this result:



As I said, it's a "quick and dirty" effort, but it once again reminded me of what an incredible program Photoshop is... this effect took all of two minutes to accomplish. -- PL