Color or B&W?

Nothing new here, I think. I have been going back and forth about rendering an image in color vs black & white. I’ve read that you can make an average photo better by finishing it off in B&W, but I think that’s a bogus claim. If it’s not good to begin with, no amount of editing is going to make it better. I have been working with this riverside photo, and I used it as a B&W in a small, square format book recently. This is taken in early spring before the desert comes alive with buds and colors. When I looked at both photos side by side, I think the color suggests a story: last year’s leaves still hang around, there’s a touch of green on the shore, and the reflected blue cloud suggest a spring shower. The branches of the fallen tree reach out in all directions, a last gasp.

As for this black and white version: I still think it’s a successful image, but it falls short of the color version. The curve of the shoreline at the left is less prominent, and the leaves have all but disappeared. I miss the sense that this tree was recently living thing and that the churning clouds promise rain. To be fair, I printed the black and white as a square, so the shoreline wasn’t in play, but it lacks the drama of the color version.