Bravo my friend! Your story made me smile. You are so right about the camera, the sensors now on cell phones are better than the DSLRs made 20 years ago. You did a good job of keeping the model/foreground visible, not in silhouette.

It really is the post-processing software. I have been trained on PS/LR but do not use them. I use Affinity Photo and they just upgraded the software with astral start stacking - my next learning project for the summer.