As I said I completely agree that the head and hair need more exposure/light. As to being "high contrast/artificially contrasty" could be but the photo is pretty much straight out of the camera. I cleaned up her face, took out a wrinkle in her dress and added very light sharpening. That's about it. No contrast added. The lens, a Sony Zeiss is so sharp that I probably didn't need to add any sharpening at all. Perhaps at some point I will get myself some "studio gear" but for now I'm just a "snapshooter" and enjoy sharing. Thank you all for the helpful input.