Scale works very well here Roshan I think B&W conversion could be improved further.I think you can improve this further by careful management of different tonal ranges from pure white to pure black and everything in between to bring out the depth and impact. Check this or or this. The interesting thing is to master is fine management of mid tones - that is the secret. Of course everything has an exception in life Hope this is useful.

Thanks a lot Ganesh for the feedback! Will try a better processed BW version this weekend. I love that Vulture shot - it's extraordinary in both BW and color renditions

Hi Ganesh,
Tried increasing the contrast a bit and made the tone curve more S-shaped. Also, reduced the Green, Yellow and Orange channel saturation in BW conversion. Look forward to your inputs on this one

Roshan, I think you can optimize on the red channel to bring out the elephant further (emphasize red, reduce contribution of green). Post the colored version also in this thread, I can comment better..

Thanks for the input. There is hardly any change by moving Red. Emphasizing on the Orange does brighten the elephant a bit, but so do the grass blades.

Here is the colour version for your inputs:

Since you have dry grass matching the color of the elephant you run out of luck here. May be some contrast/structure adjustments may help you get some depth, but not much. These are the things to watch out for in the field if you plan to convert your images to B&W. We need to see them in B&W while pressing the shutter itself!! Here is an image which helps you separate the subject during B&W conversion by emphasising/un-emphasising red/green channels combined with brightness/contrast corrections. Here is another one. A similar color image converted to B&W. Hope that explains when it will work better!!

Wow! Nice illustrations - had never realized that the colour of the light can be so important for BW conversion! Will definitely look for it in the future. Thanks for the edited image - haven't done much of selective sharpening/blurring before in post processing, but this does give a nice feel to the image.
Thanks again for taking time out to provide feedback - really appreciated!

P.S. A quick technical question - how does one upload an image from the laptop in the comments? I could only link it to a URL

haven't done much of selective sharpening/blurring before in post processing

Roshan, we can do selective sharpening/blurring using TS lenses too. For example no post processing (selective sharpening/blurring) on this this one which is made using 85mm TS lens. That leads us to the topic on digital ethics. Most of the time it does not make sense. We are not talking about cloning head of an animal and and placing another here, but those manipulations that happened ever since the photography was invented. Nature as B&W is a big violation if we go by some of those norms. Often we take shelter under the argument that what was done earlier by Ansel Adams is well within the post processing norm! Or interesting arguments like what was done in good old days are valid - that includes - dodging, burning, selective exposures, masking, selective contrast/sharpening enhancements, using different kinds of films/slides to get different effects - tungsten film, grainy 800/1600 ISO films, infra red films, using various types of color filters.. and this list goes on and on. To sum up, analogue processing is just fine but digital is strict no no Things are slowly changing for good.

Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships..
― Ansel Adams

Was Ansel a photographer or an analogue (digital/PS did not exist then) artist?

I am sure it's a long debate - I mostly stick to not deviating much from how I saw it, which is why I think use of post processing techniques where equipment ability is a constraint is completely fine e.g. HDR. At the end, I feel it is what gives you pleasure as your artistic output is what matters Having been to Ansel Adams' gallery at Yosemite, must admit I enjoyed looking at those pictures (without bothering much about how he would've processed them )

Oh, yes, I did enjoy Ansel Adams' images at the same gallery you mentioned when I visited Yosemite couple of years back.. I also noticed that the quality of light there is better for photography. We see lesser contrast between lit and unlit regions (not sure whether it is due to time of my visit, around winter if I remember it right)