How does the colouring work? Beach portrait

[lerabu]

Hi all!

Well I am making baby steps in PP. My wife and I went to the beach today and I took my camera with me. She is now in her final month of pregnancy so the camera is releasing the shutter at all times!

The memories of the day are very vivid to me and I wanted to show this through this portrait by making it vibrant!

I did first some basic colouring and exposure adjustments, vibrance, contrast, and cropping in Lightroom 3.3 and then exported the shot into PS CS5. I proceeded to copy the background layer and selected colour burn as the blending option. I deleted the burned layer over my wife and the towel because it was ovedone and kept the burned layer only over the sea and the pebbles. I did some curves adjustment further burning the highlights in the op section of the photo and lightening up my wife and the towel.

How does this work for you? Any other comments are of course welcome.

EXIF data:
Camera: Nikon D80
Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/800)
Aperture: f/3.5
Focal Length: 18 mm
ISO Speed: 100
Exposure Bias: -2/3 EV
Flash: No Flash
Exposure Program: Aperture-priority AE
Lens: 18.0-105.0 mm f/3.5-5.6

[wulf]

The colours are strong but I wonder if there are too many of them? Blue AND magenta AND lilac, as well as the more subtle colours of the beach and sea is a rather unsettling combination, especially combined with the "upside down" pose.

Wulf

[justin_ing]

I agree... I would suggest to make the just the towel less vibrant as it really does pull away from her