Short and sweet

isn’t good. Both the color and the graphic shape of the color draw the eye away from the subjects.

I solved the problems by replacing the background. Now the out of focus foliage background is perfectly complimentary. Besides eliminating the two areas that bothered me, the fact that the background is more muted than the hands means all of our attention is now directed exactly where I wanted it -- on the endearing relationship between father and daughter.

To replace the background, I used the quick selection tool in Photoshop to select the background. I then expanded the selection by two pixels (Select > modify > expand) and then feathered the selection by one pixel (Select > modify > feather). Finally, I pasted the background image (Edit > paste special > paste into) into the selection.