Sows ear to silk purse?

[Granddad]

A couple of weeks ago I took my portable studio to a venue in London to shoot more belly dancers. The room I was given (the best of a bad set of choices) was blue and had a monster skylight with bright sun pouring through, so bright that my 2 backdrop lights only worked intermittently and my settings were all screwed as the light changed with passing clouds. Image one is SOOC... normally this would have been one for the bin but I saw potential and I thought the client would like it as, pose and expression wise, it was one of the best of the batch.

1

So I went to work, put it through Lightroom 3, PSE8 and Portrait Professional 11 to come out with image 2:


2
I was quite pleased with the result, though it may qualify more as graphic art than a photograph!

Suggestions, comments and criticism to help me improve are always welcome.

 

[runnah]

Needs more shadow under her so she has some anchoring to the scene.

 

[amolitor]

Keep the foreground and shadow, yeah.

Or, Avedon (?) FTW:

 

[ktan7]

Great result from your setup!

 

[Derrel]

I agree, a bit more of an anchor from a shadow would help the shot. She appears to be leaping into the air; without shadowing to tell us that, it seems overly contrived, or maybe just "too edited".

 

[Granddad]

Thanks guys, I'll see what I can do. I learned that here but in this instance I failed to apply it. I think I was going cross eyed from editing a whole shoot under these difficult circumstances. The next couple of batches from this day will be easier because it was later and the sun had moved and clouds rolled in.