I too like the colour version better but I seem to think that the face of the woman kneeling seems to me a bit flat (must be her makeup) and Kodiak's edit made the B/W rendition so much better. Nevertheless, the I like both the shots for what it is.
Not that bad, my initial edit of the color version involved toning down the highlights and I left the blacks alone during the RAW edit, I did a tonal curves adjustment prior to converting, my main concern with the original image was reducing the noise as I used a slightly high ISO of 1250. I was very conservative with my editing as my images seem to lose detail after noise reduction.
B&W for me John. I think you nailed it. Great shot
In the face of the woman in the coloured version, mate...I do not know why it just isn't right to my eyes. But then I may be wrong...because I am using my I-refused-to-calibrate laptop monitor to view your images (and others) here. Black and white is much OK...this is one instance I really like the colour but the edit of Kodiak made it look much better in B/W.
The focus of our attention suggested by the title is the little girl being comforted. In my view, the girl and woman on the extreme left might well be concerned, but the impact of their concern in this image is lessened because they are not looking directly at the subject, and so they are a distraction. Therefore, for me, this is a good example of the principle of "less is more".
Cheers.
Philip
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