Black and White v Colour

[allumpfa]

Hi, On a recent trip to Thailand I shot some photos of James Bond Island (along with millions of other tourists, well lots anyway). When back home I converted one to B&W in photoshop and compared it to a similar but not same shot in colour. I strongly prefer the B&W one but not sure if the composition is more an influence. I would appreciate any thoughts/feedback on images welcomed. Regards Peter ,

[AndrewMcD]

My personal preference is for the color shot.....I'm no expert for sure.....The B&W composition is less appealing to my eye with the island being diminished by blending with the background.

Andrew

[Plumcrak]

I too like the color shot over the B&W for the same reasons as Andrew. I am wondering how the color shot would convert to a high contrast B&W? You won't lose the island in the background.

[dabhand]

Peter - I'd say converting the colour image to B/W gives a far better result than #1.

steve

[bnnrcn]

Welcome Peter I actually like the composition in #1 better because the island is not too centered and it doesn't seem huge comparing to #2. But I quite like the colours in #2. If you have a coloured version of #1 , I would be happy to see it.

[IzzieK]

I agree with Binnur in this one...besides it is a good playground for me to look for faces in those images. I like the first one. It is one whole complete face.

[Shadowman]

The color version has a sense of allowing the viewers attention to go beyond the land structure, to me the B & W version has a bit of a halting affect.

[Mike Buckley]

I think the separation of the subject from the background in the first one is fine. The issue that bothers me is that the top of the subject coincides with the top of the background land. I would like to see the top of the subject substantially higher than the top of the background land.

So, I prefer the color one but agree that it will make a wonderful monochrome. Just be sure to get the horizon level; it currently tilts to the left.

[FrankMi]

Hi Peter, although I generally prefer colour images to monochrome, there are a number of images that simply do not work anywhere as well in colour as they do in monochrome. I just don't think that these particular shots lend themselves to monochrome as well as they do to colour.

[allumpfa]

Thanks all for some very helpfull comments that will help me going forward especially in improving composition. I have reworked the photos as per Binnur's comment for fun and think it does work better this way round for me. ,

[bnnrcn]

Hi Peter, B&W too works fine with the second image,but you lost the clouds and islands/rocks behind. So if you want to keep it as B&W you need to work on clouds and islands/rocks behind with PP.The colour version of #1 is nice but haze spoils the image. May be you can selectively increase contrast and decrease brightness in that area to see if it works better.

You know what I thought while writing this comment Peter .. It still keeps raining here and still not very suitable for shooting. But when I start shooting and uploading photos, the others will tell me to try this, to try that with PP or they will just tell me to go and shoot again. Photography is very nice but we actually suffer .. So, I just wonder if we are sort of crazy or something

[CBImages]

For what it's worth I will toss my opinion into the ring for your consideration.
With the 1st image you posted (B&W Island against hillside), I feel you have lost a lot of shadow detail in the island during your processing of the image, I can see the detail there in the colour version.
As something different and to make the island stand out more from the background have you considered keeping the island in colour against a b&w background? This kind of processing can work really well with certain images.