Portraits can surprise us

This is a portrait I made of my friend Sam.  I see her as creative, energetic, confident. As many of you know, my usual style is what I call New Baroque: strong side light, high contrast of dark and light. I don't do it as a gimmick.  It just feels right and natural for me.

But that style of lighting just wasn't capturing my friend's image.  So I switched to the so-called photo beauty light position: light right beside the camera elevated to the ceiling.

And then I did a second thing I don't usually do.  I made the development high key in LightRoom (the images is lightened significantly).  I did all that because I thought that was what the portrait needed to convey the likeness as I saw it.  I think it works.