I saw this video by Brendan van Son yesterday, about a photo he took in Bern, Switzerland. It reminded me of the one I took there almost two years ago. Brendan took his photo from the high bridge in the background, and it is much nicer than mine, as it is taken at sunset while mine is taken in the early afternoon. Here is the original colour image that I published back then:

Bridges of Bern, colour version. Canon 550D, Canon EF-S 15-85mm IS USM, f/16, 1/10s, ISO 100

Lately I have watched the new Ansel Adams style videos by Serge Ramelli, and they inspired me to make a black and white version of it. After publishing the black and white version to 500px, it received a quite significantly higher score than the colour version, and it made me wonder why. I think most of all that since the original capture was made during daytime in quite flat, boring light, the colours made no significant contribution to the final result. It is just more or less a green-gray mess. In black and white it is easier to enhance the contrasts and get some interesting artificial lighting. I also smoothed out the water with some negative local contrast in Darktable, which helps to simplify the scene. I tried to do the same when I made the colour version but didn’t like the result back then. What do you think makes the difference, and which one do you like the best?