Churly,
I like your original color version best. But then, I'm also red-green color deficient, so what looks good to me (in color) may be off to people with normal vision.
After some good photographers mentioned to me that the skies in some of my landscapes were a bit too magenta (they looked blue to me), I adopted the following policy: If the scene is one that "ought" to look realistic, taken outdoors in daylight of any sort, I generally set the camera to "Daylight" color balance and choose "As shot" in Lightroom, and don't try to fiddle with the color sliders. On the other hand, if it is an abstract image, I will shamelessly play with the colors until I like them.
For monochromes, for a while I was printing using Epson's Advanced Black and White mode, with the tint sliders set to give what I thought was a reasonable approximation of the color of selenium-toned B&W wet darkroom prints, but recently some good photographers have complained that my prints looked "too purple" (of course they looks B&W to me), so I'm going back to straight black-and-white for my monochrome prints.
It's too bad you and I can't provide viewers with a special filter for them to look at our images through that will let them see the images they way you and I do.
Anyhow, I like your image. To me the color one works just fine. I suspect the black-and-white version would work just fine, too, if presented in pure neutral gray-scale.
Eric
