Julie, Jeremy, I guess I don't need to point out that I disagree or I'd have made the grayscale conversion right off the bat. And Julie, I never mind when someone posts a suggested revision to one of my photographs. I encourage it, but rarely agree with the conversion. So far, Slobodan has made one home run and a one-base-hit by doing that, but I can't think of anybody else I've agreed with.
It's all very discouraging. I wish you could see the 13 x 19 I just made for my portfolios. My heart always sinks as I convert from 16 bits to 8, from ProPhoto RGB to sRGB, then from PSD to jpeg, and watch the degradation at each step.
There are three things going on here. First, there's the repetition of shapes, which Julie pointed out. Second, there's the contrast between complementary colors. I haven't boosted the saturation. This is the way it is. Third, there's the incredible color in the rocks. Here's a 100% crop that maybe may help, at least to imply what's in the print. These aren't the kinds of boring rocks Ansel did in grayscale. The color in these rocks is astonishing. Furthermore, in the print, every tiny stone and rock chip is resolved.
I'm beginning to think that LuLa is a place to post street photography, not landscape. Michael posts some wonderful landscape, so does Chuck Kimmerle, but even with them it's necessary to extrapolate from a shrunken, compressed sRGB jpeg to what the actual PSDs or TIFFs and the prints must be like.