Thanks for your opinions, your entitled. The muscular definitions were not given. They were earned by her workouts. The NIK HDR process did enhance their shadows. I can turn off the layer. You can believe them to be artificially enhanced if you like. I am not that good of an artist.

The dancers I shoot are all friends. They appreciate the edits. I appreciate their POV.. Oh, the lady loves the edit. Her favorite shot is one of her side profile mainly showing her back definition from an earlier set. I was lucky with the available light. Have a great day.

Part of the processing I use is a NIK HDR efex filter which brings out the shadows. The definition is there of course.

I do use a paint/drawing filters for treating the background.

Thanks for sharing these. It reminds me to review my own not so great captures.

Thank you. As do I.

Thank you. Coming up for air can be a struggle at times.

Thank you for your observations. Rebecca takes care of herself. Always stretching and is an elementary school teacher and leads exercise classes. I will say she loves competing on the dance floor.

I purposely adjust the shadows/highlights to bring out the definitions she works on. She has copies of these images and let's me know to continue with her thank yous.

I might just try some water color styling as you have suggested. Thank you again.

Frankly she is the strongest women I know and a joy to dance with. The mother of 4 fine young men as well.

Thank you.

I mainly shoot dancers. Specifically Ballroom couples. I have been shooting since 2008 but added a new camera in 2013. I was smitten with the challenge. I am a retired IT Pro. So now I have a 4TB external drive with only 780GB open. So I have many images. Over the last few years I have branched out to serious digital enhancements and composites. I am going to post one such image with 3 versions. It is from a 2018 dance competition. The B&W version is hanging on my wall.

The subjects are personal friends. Shot with a Nikon D3100 Nikkor 18~105 mm D SS 1/125 f/4.5 ISO 800 +1step @ 35 mm no flash, always RAW. Now using a Z6. I have resized the images using RIOT. Originally processed in LRC, now using DXO PL and Affinity photo with NIK Collection and G'MIC filters. It is a journey, I do this for fun. Thanks for reading.

Jim,
I typically use the available light, then again I am usually indoors. You did not mention where you are shooting. When I shoot these groups they are all adults and I let them know how I am going to shoot. A single shot or panorama. Since they are posed slowing the shutter down 1/80 and boosting the ISO a bit (1500) and widening the aperture as much as possible does the job for me..
One shot with D3100 (Raw) on a tripod with a remote shutter release. I am behind the red polka dot & blue dressed gals. Some folks moved of course. I am sure you will do much better.

I use NX studio as secondary. DXO PL5, for Z6 & D5500. Also ON1 but for the my friend's Nikon A1000. DXO does not do NRW files.

I use Affinity Photo for edits but it handles all the RAW images too.

Welcome to the RAW world. I have been shooting Nikon since going digital in 2008. I do not shoot D800 but D3100 & Z6 so I am not going to advise you on the settings. I have read the thread so far and there are great answers in here. I will recommend the Nikon NX studio for processing of your RAW images it's free and does nondestructive edits. Do not shoot TIFF if the D800 does so. Do download the camera's manual as well. I am thinking about the memory card speed as well. Since you have been shooting sports you probably understand that. I shoot dancers in competitions. Due to lighting issues I bump into I always shoot RAW (NEF) Have a great time shooting.

I have used the Apache Open Office drawing tool for years to drag images into the document, resize, move, change background color, adjust the document settings for page size & position, margin etc. Then save it for future edits and export it as a JPG, PDF you pick the format. I just used it to put together a group of B&W photos to be used as holiday tree ornaments. It allowed me to do a final resize to about the same dimensions. I had used DXO PL for initial processing and ON1 with the first resize. Works in Windows, Mac & Linux. Oh the printing was a breeze with 8.5 x11" full sheet glossy photo paper.

I had a backup of that system to externals (2TB & 4TB) that were attached to the MyCloud system. It did not fail. I retired it. All I did was copy the files to the new QNAP NAS after building the shares/partitions. The removed & reformatted hard drive from the MyCloud now lives in a security system. The rest of the system was recycled.

I had used a WD mycloud solution in 2014 of 2TB. I had to update as they stopped supporting my model in 2019. I purchased a small 2 drive QNAP NAS. Populated with 2 4TB Toshiba drives designed for servers & NAS use. I have a WD 4TB & 2TB externals attached. I can access all of these drives with my devices, Windows & Android. I do wish I had purchased the next model up so I could add an ssd for caching but it works for me. I backup to my externals only. I am retired and I do not need an off site system. If I was to do that I would use 2 more externals and do a weekly storage swap with a location I do consulting work with. I want my data local.

There are maintenance tasks that will need to be performed with any freestanding system or NAS so think about the UI and check for ease of use. I am quite happy with the QNAP interface and available apps for media management, backups etc. All of the NAS systems for home are designed for easy managing. Good luck to you.