Long-billed Dowitcher, does this composition work?

[Gunnlaugur Sigurjónsson]

Taken with canon 1Dmark4, canon 800mm f5,6 IS. Program AE, ISO 1600, f/5,6, shutter speed 1/1600. Had the lens on a beanbag close to the water edge, with the setting sun behind me. Post processed by lightroom, did some rotation and about a 50% crop for a better composition. I am wondering if this composition works out with the out of focus bird turning its back to the camera.
The Long-billed Dowitcher is a vagrant to Iceland and this two birds are the only examples of the species that I have ever seen, birds 8 and 9 to Iceland

[Kerry Perkins]

Hello Gunnlaugur, congratulations on capturing a rare visitor! I love the warm colors and detail on the front bird. For me, the composition would be wonderful except for the second bird. It just doesn't work in the image and the single bird would be awesome. The highlights in the red channel are clipped, with many pixels reading 255. This results in a slight loss of detail in the highlights, but not much really. An exposure of 1/3 stop less light would have been perfect. Nice job of capturing a moment in natural history, I am always aspiring to do the same!

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Thanks for the great nature picture. Kerry hit the man issue, image would be much stronger with the one subject. Does seem a tad warm too, did you use AWB. Might be the red channel issue as well. Anyway, great eye and low profile, love the waters surface. You did a nice job controlling the frame, clean edges and muted transition colors - well done. Overall a great capture, keep em coming and thanks for sharing.

[Gunnlaugur Sigurjónsson]

Thanks for the feedback. I was unsure about the out of focus bird,if it did have a negative or positive effect. Now I know, luckily I have lots of pictures with just one bird in the frame. Have to post another shot when I have worked out the other issues. I take all pictures in RAW format and try to expose to the right side. When I look at the histogram in the orginal RAW file then there are no burned areas. WB was 4900 in the RAW file, I changed it to 6000 in post processing. I am always a little unsure of how to decide the right WB when there are no white or neutral grey areas in the picture. This picture was taken in the golden hour, the sun was almost touching the horizone so the light was very red. In lightroom I reduced the exposure by -0,13 and did some sharpening. I know I have to learn to use photoshop, have CS5 installed on the computer but just have not had the time to get into it. Is it possible that the clipping occurs while converting from RAW to jpeg? I use adobeRGB(1998) when converting, aint that right?