Depends on what kind of statement you are making...
Photo A is great as a photojournalism statement...it is so normal to find an old run down barn with very modern equipment so that would be making a statement about the farmer using the colored version.
Photo B has a nice nostogic touch to it. You might even want to try and add a little more of a sepia tone to it and enhance that old feeling to it a little more.
But if I was going to hang it B with a little more of the yellowing sepia effect!
Ummm, That's a new tractor? Isn't that exhust pipe awfully rusted (not to mention the rest of the tractor) to be new?
Well Mike, new is a relative thing. That tractor is probably mid eighties, I think, but there are plenty of tractors from the 60's & 50's still out there working.
I'm the one voice of dissent here. I personally prefer A more. I'm not a fan of sepia. B&W I love. Sepia, uh no.
I do think that both pictures could be improved if the lighting was not so harsh and strong. If the photograph was taken later in the day, when the sun is lower in the sky, the deep shadows on the front of the tractor and the barn would be more subtle. The harsh shadow of the tractor cast on the barn is especially troubling.
For the duotone picture, I don't think the affect of making the photograph appear old and worn (which perhaps is the reason you used sepia) has been achieved. B doesn't have the essences of an old, worn photo, other than it's lack of RGB color. Perhaps, as OneSweetSin suggested, changing the tone cast of B would result in an older, more worn quality. Play around with it and see how it looks.
Don't ever crop your photos. Just take the picture right the and if you don't get it right the first time take another picture until you get it right. You will become a better photographer if you do this.
Both pitures are Ok but have this feel of abandon with not much happening in them. Get the owner/conductor of this vehicle to pose for you for example, it will then be much easyer to choose a good framing and then picking out the appropriate shot; it will make your photograph a world more interesting to you and to all of us. Give viewers a glimps of genuine humanity, make some sense out of a scene and they will worry much less on how your photo was constructed, focused, toned etc.
Don't ever crop your photos. Just take the picture right the and if you don't get it right the first time take another picture until you get it right. You will become a better photographer if you do this.
I'm gonna say the opposite.
Always try cropping your photos. A photo may look fine to you but until you try cropping it in many different ways you will never know if you can get something better. It's amazing what as little as 10 pixels can do to improve a photograph. It also means when resizing to fit the DPC size limits you can get more detail on the area you want, which is like extra zoom which your camera may not have.
Putting aside the colour thing for a moment, what really bugs me with those shots is the over-hanging branch masking the barn so much: shot from a little lower I think it would make more of a natural frame for the image, rather than intruding so much. I also think the shot is over-exposed (this is one shot, processed differently, yes?) - this especially hutrs the colour version, as everything colour-wise has become very pale. A stop or so under would bring the colours out much more, and allow some texture to appear that's been lost here.
Completely agree with Starblazer about time of day - I think the sepia versin would benefit most from that - the light as it is is killing so many good elements in that scene, and I think less rather than more contrast would work better: don't see how increasing the range of dark to light would help (but I'd be very interested to see)
