I agree with you Dave. I like the pole too. The only things I would have done differently in processing perhaps would have been to crop it so the pole extended off the bottom of the picture, and toned the brightness of the pole a tad so your eye is drawn back to the boat. I love that you were able to catch the water in the bottom of the boat and how the pole is reflected in it. It draws the whole composition together. Nice shot.

Definitely the B&W. The overall composition is very good -- framing, rule of thirds, etc. In the B&W, the subject tells the story. In the color version, to me, the color has become the story and is distracting. But then again, I'm partial to B&W. The bottom line is: does the photo tell the story you want to tell, and what is it that you like as the photographer.

Color is great, but sometimes a photo just works better in black and white. It can set a mood, add drama, or just remove the distraction of color so you can get to the heart of a story.

If I'm going to take snap shots (which is not very often), JPEG is okay, but when I want my photos to step up and pop, then RAW is the only way to go. I process my RAW images in Lightroom. It's fast easy, and flexible. The results are far superior to JPEG. Lightroom will convert and print the RAW files. I will only convert a RAW image to JPEG if I'm going to email someone or post a photo on line.