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These are both great subjects for B&W.
In the first shot, I’d go for a more dynamic point of view. Lower to the ground, move to the right to use the railing as a leading element…. Back-lighting can be dynamic, but in this shot the background is washed out so much and the foreground lightened so much that it’s hard to tell what the lighting is. Random blotches in the picture are lighter too, like the spot of grass below the covered walk on the right and spot of stone to the left of the small arched window in the top of the building. It appears to me that all the editing is just an attempt to cover up a not-so-great shot in the first place.
The shot of the pillars is better. I would have stepped to the right to lessen the amount of space between the pillars to almost nothing. I would have framed it to include much less space above the in-focus pillar. The whole top-left portion of the image is empty; and worse, the empty space is in focus distracting from the one pillar that is suppose to be the main focus. The emphasis on texture is great, though.
Also, in the first shot, take the time to remove the spots of dirt that show up in the sky. I see 5 right off in the left half of the sky.
I used an HDR plug in in LR that I have been playing with and it adds spots that aren’t in the original image or does something to really make them stand out.
I’m going to be playing a lot more with black and white this fall and winter. Mostly with architecture.
I wasn’t happy with the blown sky in the first image either. The sun is in the upper left and a big chunk of sky is blown out.
I use my highlights preview feature on playback and then adjust my exposure for high dynamic range shots if I have the opportunity. I usually use spot metering with a tiny spot and try to meter off of the main subject or a neutral element in the frame. If need be I’ll try very hard not to blow out much and then bring up the exposure in post.
One day I’ll have to learn how to do HDR with software with three or more images.
Just curious, you use an HDR plugin in Lightroom? To my knowledge, plugins can’t ‘edit’ pictures, presets would actually make changes, but I don’t know about plugins. Are you sure you don’t mean preset?
There’s probably a way to edit the preset so that it doesn’t do that random spots and brightnesses.
It’s always fun to explore a different genre. I don’t shoot a lot of B&W, so I’d be curious what you discover is helpful. What I do know is that contrast is key, and that includes how colors will convert.
When it comes to HDR, I really like Jimmy McIntyre’s methods that only require PS. (These random programs that merge multiple images using presets and millions of sliders just turn true photography into art.) I recommend digital blending. This article was super helpful for me: http://iso.500px.com/digital-blending-tutorial-creating-clean-natural-hdr-images/
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