From the link: Hardy often uses weather as the "pathetic fallacy." This photograph in such a context might function similarly, as "our impressions of external things" receive a falseness produced by "violent feelings."
I'm not sure he or other authors only use it in this way though. When lightning splits the chestnut tree in Jane Eyre for exmaple, she and the reader can't but help see its relation to her personal predicament - is that fallacy? 'Pathetic fallacy is a loaded term and operates on a set of philosophical axioms of separateness that might be seen as a psychosis of alienation. One man's coincidence is another's sign and one's man plain sky another's crucible of the mind. Many authors have investigated this beyond the blanketing notion of 'pathetic fallacy'. The interplay between the (perceived) external and internal worlds cannot be written off with this one thin term.
