Should This Photo Be Saved?

So I'm going thru my photos from a session with my one of my favorite models ever, Little Ms. Alexis, when I come to this image...

...and I have to make the decision "Do I trash this photo or save it?".

There's so many obvious flaws...the crop is so wrong...the white balance is awful...the exposure pretty much stinks.  This SOOC image will definitely NOT be in an upcoming blog about "getting it right in camera"!  It was actually a test shot when I was testing the lighting to photograph her baby sister and I told her all she had to do was sit there:)

Also, I already had so many images that I knew were going to be fabulous.
What would you do?  Would you save it or trash it?


Despite all the flaws, the expression on this photo just captivated me and I knew I had to save it.

Of course the first thing I did, since I'm a cropping maniac, was crop in Lightroom to make sure there was no mistake that this portrait was all about that expression.  Here's my crop...

Then I had to get rid of her sunburned cheeks but I didn't want to lose the detail of all those great freckles so I did a few curves adjustments then decided to a very light black and white photo.  I used a whole mish mash of Florabella actions and finally came up with a recipe I liked.  Here's a comparison shot of the SOOC and my final portrait...

And here's the final image in all it's glory~

I pretty much luv it.

So tell me....do you think it was worth saving?  


{you can check out all the other images from this session that I saved by clicking right here}