Nothing wrong with being compared to Ansel Adams 
I agree, but not entirely. It's a matter of nuances and I'm not sure of being able to express my thoughts with my poor english.
When the
first reaction to an image is not related to the image, but to something else, such as "wow, what a sharpness!" or "what beautiful saturated colors!" or even "what a wonderful Ansel Adams sky" then, in my opinion, there is a kind of failure: there is a technical aspect that has the upper hand on the image and creates a kind of barrier that prevents the observer from being absorbed by the image. It's like when the trick prevails over magic.
If I say, looking at a raw file in postproduction, "here I could obtain a nice sky in the style of Ansel Adams," I might fall into this trap, because I'm not working on my perception, but on a cliché.
Regarding the two images with the boat, I perceived in the color image more coherence: big clouds in a luminous and peaceful atmosphere, non dramatic. In the BW image my
first impression was that of a dramatic sky pasted on a peaceful atmosphere.
Of course it's a matter of subtle balance: the same trick can be perceived as real magic or as a simple puzzle.
Too tortuous thoughts?
