I showed you in my first clarity post how to use negative clarity in Lightroom or Camera Raw to soften skin. For a creative look, try heavy negative clarity on the whole image:

Negative clarity reduces midtone edge contrast, so it softens or blurs. The pier is much less ffected by the softening because it has alot of deep shadow tones.

It looks kind of like a slide sandwich, or having a gaussian blur layer or smart filter in the soft light blending mode over the background layer (for those that have taken my filters, blending modes and montages creative class.) You may have to increase vibrance or saturation and contrast afterwards.

Note that Camera Raw introduced negative Clarity with CS4. It has been in Lightroom since version 1.