lazy fall day w/ the kids - november 2008 A Boy and his Dog

Hello Kym and welcome to Photo.net. You've captured a nice moment here. I would probably crop a little more of the over-exposed sky out and play with the Contrast\Shadows and try to remove some of the sun flare off the dog. I spent about 5 minutes playing with it and came up with this. It could be done better with the full size image to work with.

I suspect the original image is underexposed (for the Subject and the Foreground).

Notwithstanding the effects of both the Veiling Flare and the Direct Flare: the initial underexposure renders the image difficult to retrieve to a full Tonal Range of the B&W spectrum.

I expect this is, in part, is what was being attempted by the alternative offered.

The tell is twofold: the lack of detail in the blacks and; the reduced tonal range both in the original and in the alternative.

This might be of interest to you, in regard to recovering incorrect exposure:

http://photo.net/beginner-photography-questions-forum/00R27T

This might be of interest to you, in regard to Flare:

http://photo.net/beginner-photography-questions-forum/00QxjQ

These technical comments also go to enhance my input to your post here:

http://photo.net/beginner-photography-questions-forum/00RdUj

WW