Thank you for the welcoming words
overall, the softness was intentional due to the fact that the model is an older woman, and i figured that sharpness and detail would accent some wrinkles that wouldn't be too flattering, that being said, i believe the last one was way overdone with too much gaussian blur and am going to fix that one for sure, thank you for your advice on exposure, especially pertaining to her dress, what i really want to achieve is to have a subject "jump" out of the background, but still retain a natural look, not sure if i'm explaining it properly, i wonder if some flash might achieve this, i don't have good off camera flash as of yet but that is my next purchase quite soon
Thanks