Per attm's post regarding how to process a contrasty image with Photoshop, I took the liberty of punching up his example photo in his post and added it back in here. This is attm's photo read into Photoshop Elements with the "Enhance"-> "adjust lighting" -> "shadows and highlights" tool employed. The shadows punched up 35%, the highlights darkened 25% and the mid-tone contrast punched up 25%. Then the "curves" tool was employed to add a back a bit of low-end contrast, resulting in this image. The entire process takes about a minute (after learning PSE that is). Nice shots on this page attm!