attempt at b/w conversion

Looks nice but I would try without the round borders. It is a personal opinion, I never like that...

Agreed. I like the photo, if you were going for and old look make the border more jaged

Thanks for the comments. I was actually trying the border style for a blog. I don't like photos just sitting out in white space when there's text/content around. Perhaps I'll take away the black and just stick with the rounded edges.

I like this. the texture at the bottom is really nice.

A little crispy in the sharpening department. What tends to happen with sharpening is the percentage of tonal weight across the frame migrates towards the extremes of white and black fortifying edges but robbing the frame of the original tone center for the given element; i.e. the grass now looks white with black edges while the grass itself was likely closer to a zone 4 or 5 in original capture. Another example is the tone on the shadow side of the barn compared to the sunlit side. The sunlit side should have a similar gradation but 2 stops or so higher in zone (see A.Adams Tone System).

You've got just enough shadow detail on the right side of the barn, which is good...its not totally lost in a sea of black (looks like you have enough room to pull out some more detail, though). But I also agree with jetcode about the sharpening...way too strong, to the point where I'm seeing artifacts on my monitor. Pull up the shadows and back off a bit on the sharpening and you'll be okay.

PS jetcode, I don't think its grass in the foreground...looks more like corn rows. But I may be wrong...

This was a 3 shot bracket that i pulled into Photomatix before converting to B/W. I'm still experimenting with it, so that's possibly where the oversharpening came from. The original looks better imo.

And yes, that is corn in the foreground, so it is a pretty light color to begin with.

Here's the color version for comparison:

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I like the B&W version. Good detail and contrast. I too don't care for the rounded dark frame. Maybe a slight vignette would be better. I would suggest either cropping out part of the sky of turning in into a darker tone.