black & white with GIMP

I'm not so good at postprocessing and totally new to GIMP
I've tried black&white with this shot of my daughter on the balance beam. What do you think?

I'd want to clean up the sides and bottom of the beam to eliminate competition with the gymnast.

The BW conversion seems good to me unless you want to bring out texture in the dark areas of the suit.

Emmm.... emmmm.... emmm... You know. Look at this this way... look at this as a static image. There is no movement seen. And the pose itself is not beautiful or artistically compelling, or somehow difficult to master. To me it is a silly photo with a woman awkwardly lying on a ... what's that thing?... Please, do not take it to your heart, as it is your daughter, and you know the context, but we have no such informatiom :]

olafs osh wrote in post #18643679
Emmm.... emmmm.... emmm... You know. Look at this this way... look at this as a static image. There is no movement seen. And the pose itself is not beautiful or artistically compelling, or somehow difficult to master. To me it is a silly photo with a woman awkwardly lying on a ... what's that thing?... Please, do not take it to your heart, as it is your daughter, and you know the context, but we have no such informatiom :]

It's ok, no problem! I know it's nothing special (a little gymnast on a balace beam), I just wanted opinions on black and white conversion...I tried with this photo exactly because it's static and simple, having to deal with gimp masks and color desaturation I wanted something easy to start with, it could have been a few lego bricks

Setting aside subject matter ( I have plenty of images of my kids that only their dad would love - and I don't care what others think of them - they are my kid ) the conversion is too flat. In one sense, the shadows are too dark and lack depth, and the whites are too flat grey. Now that said, much of this are style and preference. I find that most stuff here is far too processed, and I prefer a more subtle look to images. Some have the HDTV hyper contrast look.... and that works ok if you don't loose definition and detail. But in an attempt to get "sharpness" you often see mid-tones completely ignored. I guess where I am going is I would look to bring up the shadows here to bring more life to her mid section of this photo. More detail in the material. For what it is worth...