Moving from the Wet Darkroom to the Digital Darkroom

I had a darkroom for 30 years.  I did some color work, but much more black and white.  During my darkroom days (which ended in 1999), I preferred black and white for a number of reasons.  There was much more you could do in the darkroom to influence the interpretation of a black and white image than a color image.  Black and white tended to emphasize the graphic elements, textures and tones of an image, often lending itself well to abstractions.  Absent color, it was easier to argue that photography was not limited to literal expression.

Today, owing to the sophisticated tools available in the digital darkroom and a diminishing learning curve in becoming proficient with those tools, there is more you can do with color to influence the interpretation of an image than with black and white.  Not that the digital darkroom has left black and white behind, quite to the contrary.  But in a color image there is simply more information at your disposal.  We can now explore the complexities of color relationships in a image as fully as its graphical elements.

Here is an image interpreted in color, then in black and white.  Both renditions are works in progress, both show promise in my view.  If I had to favor one, I might lean slightly toward the color, or maybe not.  I'd love to hear any thoughts.