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Hi @stiebs !
Your post brings back fond memories, Lena and I had our honeymoon on Mermaid 2, exact same itinerary, I am sure you had a great trip!
I like the post-processed version which you posted here. True, it’s quite saturated and some people might say too much, but personally I don’t mind. I love how the yellow corals pairs with the blue background (complementary colours), and how the sun-beams are emphasized. They do add interest in the absence of fish.
In fact, your developed version looks really like a red sea type of shot: clear blue, saturated water, whereas Indonesian water tends to be a little more aqua.
So this is a big colour shift indeed, and the only visual downside is the corals in bottom corners have turned a little green. You could apply a local adjustment to remove the green hue, or globally don’t go just as far with your WB adjustment.
If you want to improve the original RAW, you could look to adjust the white balance in-camera, either use the colour temp of your strobes, or do a custom WB measurement. It would get you closer to the 2nd version. However it’s normal that your out-of-camera raw file is more “flat”, which gives you more latitude for post-processing.
Composition-wise, I actually prefer the first version, with more ‘breathing space’ around the coral head. It would have been perfect as-is, if the diver had been on the top third line, actually posing for you, looking at that coral.
Granted it’s not always possible to have a willing model with you, but I know my “keepers rate” of coral reef shots increase a lot if I have a model to move around.
Yes I would have tried to go lower on that coral, to see if the composition would have looked stronger (not sure).