BW with a hint of blue

Taken from Bute looking to Arran. 1DS3 and 17 - 35mm at 17mm. F22 at 1/8th, ISO 100 and polariser. Converted to BW in photoshop and some further work on lightening the lights and darkening the darks! Finally, a slight blue hue added.
I really would be grateful for any critique.
Best wishes
Phil

I'm viewing this on my uncallibrated works laptop and I am finding the beach stone/foreground hill band too dark and lacking any detail - its just a dark band across the image with no real point of interest to draw my eye and the distant hills are just a bit too diffuse to add interest for me. I think it one of those images which may have needed the telephoto lens to pick out some better leading lines rather than a full wide angle treatment. Did you experiment with different focal lengths as the lighting is gorgeous

Thanks Mike. I did try various focal lengths and various settings in camera. In fact, I was on that freezing beach for nearly 3 hours! I posted this image because I am definitely NOT much use with B/W and, as always, I find the best way to learn is from others kind comments.Perhaps you are right in that I darkened the F/G too much, but I was trying to emphasize the sky. I will try again with a lighter F/G.
Many thanks
Phil

Mike
This is a colour image from the same session.
Cheers
Phil

Hi Phil I like the colour one so I had a go at it but first put your sunglasses on .

The B/W one needs the sky to be darker and the blacks a little lighter I think.


Phil.

Hi

I like the overall composition of the first b&w shot. I think it could be processed alternatively to bring out more of the image. You could play around with some b&w from various plugins to CS. The black area in the middle isn't too black but why shouldn't there be b&w in a b&w image. I recommend reprocessing the top and bottom of the image seperately so you can bring out the best exposure from each half and then recombining.

Thanks

Ian