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Best regards

PDE

compliments extraordinary image i like it brava jessica regards gerolamo

A timid and maybe impromptu incursion in the water as suggested by the dresses/hats.The sepia tones and soft vignetting give this excellent image a vintage flavor.Good work!

Meilleures salutations-Laurent

Great photo! Very beautiful! :)

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Obviously not dressed for a little dip there are small timid steps into the water. We've all seen it so many times and the photo beings the feeling across clearly. I like the toning and the softness created by the vignette. I like it

It's a romantic, mythic, and idolized view of the world, made that much more obvious by the imposed blurring and exaggerated highlighting/vignetting, which just looks messy to me.

Sometimes a photo tries too hard, and it shows.

The treatment might be a little messy and obvious, but experimentation is part of the process that we have all experienced and have served as our springboard to more advanced techniques.

In this case, I can see how the apparent vintage clothing and the two little girls might have made a perfect subject for a vintage photo. It takes practice to make it convincing but most of us only try it occasionally, if at all, but it's only by doing can we develop insight.  

Here's a quick and dirty alternate interpretation:

http://gallery.photo.net/photo/17516670-lg.jpg

Michael, very good points.  I don't know if Jessica is experimenting or if this is a long-established workflow and goal.  It's the blurring with darkening on the outside of an oval shape around the girls that I find much too apparent.

My honestly and, hopefully, constructively critiquing a photo doesn't mean that I don't appreciate experimentation. We can learn from experimentation and from critiques of it.

Don't we have a critique forum here because it's not only by doing that we learn? In part, it also helps to share and get feedback in order to learn.

Hopefully, no critique is meant to stifle creativity or experimentation. It is meant to supplement and refine it.

Somehow I get the feeling the exaggerated softness is purposely done. It somewhat reminds me of the old center spot filter at a medium to larger aperture

Certainly it was purposefully done.  It just wasn't done very well, IMO.  I can see the line between the softened and darkened area and the unaffected area.  A center spot filter on a camera would not have a sharp or distinct division like this.

The solution for Jessica, IMO (admittedly I'm not a processing expert), is to use a selection tool with a much wider feather in order to have a more gradual transition between the affected and unaffected areas.