Interesting portrait, and I am a firm believer that it is perfectly legit to use lenses wide open. I use my 55mm f1,2 wide open almost all the time, even if folks complain about vignetting, lack of sharpness, coma and whatnot.
I studied photography for a while and one of my tutors at the time said that the first thing he would like to do is glue the paerture ring stuck at the wide open aperture on all student cameras (mostly a bunch of Minolta X300's and a few Canons and Nikons thrown in the mix, mostly equipped with a 50mm f,4, 50mm f1,7 or 50mm f1,8)
Through my personal struggle to understanding photograph and how to make it work for me, I found that with certain lenses, stopping down often takes more away then it does add. Less is more would be a general wisdom that applies here. Bring along the message by omitting everything else. Of course, this can be taken to extremes, or seen as a loose guideline depending on your personal interest in photography. I stick with the loose guideline)
Another wise word this tutor spoke was that rules are there to be broken. Bjorn already said that, but I would like to repeat it here.
As much as fashion photography dictates how young ladies want o look these days (and the past 2-3 decades for that matter), I think that beauty edits belong to glossy magazines. Not to family photos. So, Daniel, in my opinion, your daughter looks really nice just the way she is, and favorable light can add it's bit. I don't see an issue with a removing a blemish on the skin, or removing the one or other imperfection.
I expect Ethan meant to help. Most likely coming from a different perspective, he sure made that photograph pop and it would look great printed in a glossy, but as others mentioned, this kind of aggressive editing takes away from the character of a person. The character your photograph manages to capture so nicely.
Then some go on about the busy bokeh bubbles around her head. I just happen to love those, and I never found them to be distracting even in your first version of the photo. To be honest, I miss them in the later photo you posted. The background becomes too dark and dull without hem.
The 85mm f1,4 has a distinct look to it, and the outlined bokeh bubbles belong to that. If you want the edited smoothed bubbles posted by some, try the 5cm f2 Nikkor-S. That lens gives you those straight from the camera. Personally, I like the outlined ones in this shot.
Now on to the only point of critique from my behalf. Watch your background. You won't see it that way through the viewfinder of your camera, but that tree on the right. Now that's distracting! The vertical crop of the first picture gets rid of that and to me, is the perfect solution here. No further background editing required.
Elsa, even though I expect you also only intedn the best here, your added bubbles, to me, take away from the pureness of the picture and make it into a fairytale shot. The rest of your edit towards delicacy works real well for me, even though the overall image apperas a bit cold. But the added bubbles are of different shape and opacity, and of different texture compared to the original ones. Maybe it would have been better to copy a few of the original bubbles, or leave them as they were. I'm not into the smooth bubbles either, but the added ones really take away from your edit. (That is just my opinion though)
With all of that out of the way, really cool conversation you got going here. One thing I appreciate from this forum. A lot of very different opinions and approaches based upon who we all are.
