A Heron, Some mountains

[Downrigger]

General, frank C&C urged.
My struggle with this one relates to white balance. The first is as shot (Auto WB 1 on D600) and is at 6250. For the second, I used the pen to select neutral in the white of the clouds and wound up with 5700. I’m trying to get my hands around a framework for selecting the WB that is best suited to this shot.

[Brownbear]

I always struggle with the appropriate WB to represent what I saw, and everyone tells me it is a creative decision...

Lovely image. I like both but I think I prefer the in-camera WB, perhaps the 2nd image is just a tad, too blue for my personal taste.

[chauncey]

I like the bird being part of the landscape but while your exposure is proper for the landscape, it's leaving the bird underexposed. Can you make the bird brighter in PP? Also ya might want to crop to put the bird more towards the left edge of the image...rule of thirds and all that horse hockey. It is a nice, minimalist image...worthy of printing.
Christina is correct, WB is a personal decision.

[mknittle]

Very nice images,

[Downrigger]

Thank you Mark, Chauncey, Christina... All suggestions make sense. Thanks for the reassurance on WB - perhaps I've been getting unnecessarily hung up about it lately.

[jcuknz]

Quite apart from the RoT Hockey there is the point that moving subjects should have more space in front of them than behind them.
If you select out the bird, perhaps preferably not exactly right and copy it as a new layer you should be able to adjust its darkness that chauncey doesn;t like and move it to a better position in frame ... cloning it out of its original position,

In my book composition is more important than slight colour balance differences.