Help me call this one

[Matt. K]

I can usually decide which version of an image looks best...colour or B&W. But here's one where I am truely stumped. Both versons look great...but which one looks best?
What's your opinion?

[aim54x]

I am going to have to vote monochrome

[phillipb]

Don't know why but the colour one keeps my attention longer.

[Murray Foote]

The colour works better for me. I'm not sure that the monochrome's quite right. Maybe darken the cyan/blues for more separation between sky and ground. Maybe lighten the greens in the tree to go for an infrared effect. I think maybe it's too flat and the lighter places (where the eye tends to go) are in the background. Opposite approach: lighten the background (earth and sky).

[chrisk]

I find the bush in the background less distracting in the mono.

[PiroStitch]

The second for me as the eye focuses more on the pattern from both subjects. There's a faint highlight by the clouds on the foreground subject as well, it's subtle but effective with the b&w.

The colour contains too much contrast.

[surenj]

You are right, both are equal I reckon.

I find the bush in the background less distracting in the mono.

I find it more distracting as it blends to the main subject!

[ozimax]

Even though I recently purchased (for my wife's birthday) a huge coffee table book of Ansel Adams' works, I am not a great fan of BW photography. (I admit it; I'm a strange and tiny minority here). Hence, I vote for the colour image.

[Mj]

I wouldn't be able to choose either... some will prefer colour, others b&w but that's more about preference rather than which is actually better.
There is nothing in this image, that I see, to influence it one way or the other.
I might suggest trying a few other processing options (sepia, ir, etc, etc) to find what doesn't work !!!

[Remorhaz]

Monochrome

[tigerhue]

I prefer the monochrome one.

[colin_12]

I prefer the mono Matt

[zafra52]

I prefer the colour one. Why don't you call it
"Going With The Wind"? It has a touch of
Hollywood appeal.

[Murray Foote]

I think that there's nothing here that a chainsaw and a combine harvester wouldn't have fixed, leaving just the main tree in a stark monochrome landscape enhanced by tonal jiggerypokery and an IR conversion.