same place after the British Waterways onslaught:

One of your best.

Which one?

This is one of the loveliest photos I've seen on Ipernity, and it's a great historical record of that spot as it was.

Composition is perfect, the figures and boat are perfectly placed, but its real glory is the lighting - the low sun giving depth and bringing the foliage to life and producing those wonderful shadows streaking across the path, together with the green, half-in-shade boat and muted colours giving the scene the look of a Gainsborough or Constable. I also like the way the bit of tree, top right, holds the scene together, and the "corona" round each of the back-lit figures.

If it were my picture (if only it were) I'd have airbrushed out the cables (thought they're mostly hidden) and perhaps removed the rightmost figure, though those are very minor criticisms.

Each to their own. I don't think it's that brilliant, but a nice reminder of how things used to be.
It was such a treat to walk along this path in the old days. My own criticism is that there's a distracting piece of white beside the girl's head, perhaps a white bag, and I intend to clone that out when I get around to it. I certainly wouldn't remove the rightmost figure.

Each to his own, indeed. Behind the girl and her father are two other figures, party hidden. The white bag belongs to one of them. They should certainly be removed. Perhaps the grandfather should stay, just recolour his clothes (and the father's trousers) to fawn rather than blue.

No, I'm not going to rearrange their wardrobe. The blue jeans are fine as they are.

You're not expected to. I'm saying that it's what *I* would have done.

Can't think why. Fawn trousers wouldn't show up so well.

Because blue jeans (which I myself wouldn't wear anywhere) don't belong in an oil painting-like scene, nor do blue jackets.

But it's not an oil-painting scene. It's a picture of Hythe Bridge Moorings before it got trashed.
Many of the people who live there wear blue jeans, as do the passers-by.

That's the difference between a pictorial photographer (which I am) and a documentary one, concerned chiefly with recording reality, warts and all. It's just sad that today the two schools can so seldom be combined.

It's also sad to see adults so lacking in dress sense.

But they are combined in my case. I am also a 'pictorial photographer' and do for the most part try to make each photo into a picture, rather than just taking an any-old-how snap to document what's there.

Why should this be less of a picture because the men are wearing blue jeans?
Is it the blue that offends you, or the fact that the trousers are made of denim?
Would a naval uniform be okay? Or casual fawn corduroys, as I've seen you wear?

And if you don't like blue jackets, then how about this?

1. OK, but you don't go as far as I do.
2. Because they're intrusively modern, and hence detract from the timeless feel of the picture
3. Both
4. Yes they would
5. Very Constable-like.