Excellent Deeno
One of the great things that I find I love about black and white is that its often far more subtle on the eye than its equivalent colour version. Losing that extra dimension lets you see the whole picture, as it were, without the added distraction of colours fighting to be noticed. Tone is what matters, and with just light and dark areas to control you have so much more scope to be creative. With colour, you can end up simply being washed out on one end of the adjustment spectrum and over-saturated and plastic on the other.
I particularly like the shot in Hyde Park and also in the cathedral. The Hyde Park shot is a nice "street" photograph. It shows people in an uncontrived situation as a snapshot in time. This is what interests me more than anything these days, and I must admit that my interest in astrophotography has taken a big second place to this.
I hope you'll forgive me, I've taken the liberty to tweak a little and post back how I reckon these two could look given the high resolution originals. Ive simply brightened the Hyde Park image to show a fuller dynamic range and removed the quarter-segment of the street light from the top right of the image as it was distracting. The cathedral now has a little "film grain" associated with it, but it's difficult working with low resolution jpegs.
Nice effort - do more!!!
