Both of the horse photos are basically portraits. There's not enough environment to make a "larger" photograph, it's just a horse with barely enough surround to recognize it as "where one might find a horse naturally"
This works great for people, since we find people interesting, and our brains actually have an immense amount of machinery in them for interpreting faces and body language, so a similar photograph of a person gives us a great deal of stuff to look at and thing about. We can write our own little narrative of the person, and so on.
Horses, well, I at least have no such similar machinery in my brain, so it comes across as just a handsome specimen of a horse. I feel no story, I feel no urge even to invent a story. I think if you're more "horsey" than I am (I like horses just fine, and have ridden a few, but no more) it might speak more to you. You might feel the weight of legendary thoroughbreds in this image, you might feel a thousand stories -- I dunno, I don't!
I like the color more, the b&w is too dark for me (which is weird, I *love* that dark shit, shove the shadows down black, go bold and dark, I love it all!). The lost detail in the horse seems to somehow damage the small amount of appeal this photo has for me.
If it were MY horse, I think this photo would be fantastic.
