I think the image is fun and the foam tubes sort of position this lovely lady into a menacing posture with perhaps a "you need to be spanked" attitude...
A couple of thoughts.
Image is too contrasty - that's the first thing I notice and it calls attention away from the image motif. More on that later... Fill flash would have helped a lot here - even if of the popup variety.
Lose the balloons - in this image they are no longer balloons but have become an object the viewer has to spend time identifying - even if only for a millisecond or two. At first glance I didn't know what these were and my mind began to go into Object ID mode...
Too much water in the foreground - cropping would probably both benefit and hurt this image. I think the photo needs a little cropping - but then the foam tubes would probably get cropped to the point where they no longer work as well in the image.
The general background is a bit noisy (not image noise, but just too much stuff - fence, trees, etc). The darkness minimizes this, but its still a distraction.
Due to the limited capability to crop this photo - and the high contrast - additional post processing may not do a lot, but it's probably worth a try.
I'm not entirely clear on the overall image motif. My initial reaction (at the top of this post) is what I surmise it to be, however it remains somewhat ambiguous overall. Clearly you liked the image - and it is a clever and fun image, but I get the feeling that any motif is serendipitous rather than executed. That's not bad - many great photos just "happen", however the ambiguity seems embedded into this image because the subject isn't totally convincing me of her intent nor her ability to subdue me with her weapons... ;-)
Des
