Most likely because she didn't add enough gain to the sunlight inside Luxrender. I'm not blaming her - most of us are learning this as we go ;).

The attached image was done with the skydome in place, but I changed the gain on the sunlight from 1.0 to 20.0. As you can see, there's plenty of bright light and shadow.

And yes, I spelled reclamation wrong...lol.

Laurie