Navajo ponies

An interesting and different take. There is a lot to see here—the ponies, the braided stream, the mid-ground trees and the "table top" ghostly mesas. Yet the ponies, which are the subject, still hold my attention. Very imaginative work, wrapped up in a nice B/W conversion.

Beautifully composed image Kathy! I also like how the light is hitting the water and backlighting the manes of the horses. I like the comp as is but also like cropping off the top down to just below the top of the mesa on the left.

Love the rim light on the ponies manes and the overall composition. Very interesting photo - simple in some ways, but yet lots to explore. The B&W conversion works well too

Great job for handheld on a bouncy truck. I usually like nature shots in color but this particular shot works well in B&W. The strong lighting, while it probably does wash out some of the color, does help highlight all the varying textures and shapes in this image. So, yes, B&W was a great way to go IMO. I like the sharply defined lines of the cliffs, the wispy look of the trees and bushes, and the dark silhouettes of the horses against the light gray of the water. The lighter gray areas on the top and bottom help direct our attention to the interesting darker-toned middle section. Good job making a nice picture from a less-than ideal situation, Kathy!

I like the scene and the composition, Kathy. Even the horses being silhouetted is not a problem. I don't care for the washed out cliffs in the background though. I can see that you lightened them considerably but when you do that you need to increase the contrast along with the brightness to keep some shadow definition. Lightening a very dark color photo will result in a lot of chroma noise so converting to b&w was a good choice as it pretty much eliminates that problem.

Kathy, I think your b&w treatment works well here on a very interesting scene. I think there are some processing changes that could make this stronger. First, there's a dark rim/sky halo along much of the top and side of the butte on the left and there's haloing along the right side of the center tree. I don't know what your processing is, but I see this kind of halo on high contrast edges when I use Tony Kuyper's triple play or use unsharp mask in PS with a low value, high radius settings (say 30, 50, 0). I also think this image would be helped with some added contrast in the sides of the buttes. I like to do that using TK's luminosity masks and darkening through a darks mask or lightening through a lights mask.

This looks like four layers here, and the shades of black and white seem just right for each layer. Then the ponies stand out from all four layers. I especially like the light on the trees and the foreground.

Kathy, this is a really neat take here on this view. Timing of the horses in the scene is excellent. I'm not good with B&W image processing, but I think some further adjustments here and there might enhance things overall. I wish I could give exact ideas, but the BG contrast in general looks like an item for a bit of review.