(Bear with me - I do get to the point
)
I am just reading the
Joel Tjintjelaar and
Julia Anna Gospodarou book 'From Basics to Fine Art Black and White Photography'
I am only part of the way through it and I am probably paraphrasing horribly and incorrectly what they say but part of their message is along the lines of....
...use the initial image solely as a starting point, try to visualise what you actually see in your 'head' and how it would look in a perfect world where you could change reality to how you wanted it/thought it should be/have been.
If you take this line then it may not matter that you can't take photos any more or it may make it ok for someone else to take them for you and you then go through the process of what it should have been/how it gets across to others how you felt about it.
I realise this is all a bit arty farty - and is not my usual kind of stuff. But I am getting a great deal from the book and for the time being I am going with its flow.
To illustrate what I am going on about, here is a link to one of my original images of a clown:
http://bthedigitalmonochromeforum.runboard.com/t200580
(can't see any post numbers but if you scroll down the page your will soon get to it
)
and here is a link to my interpretation of it - aimed at getting the viewer to see clowns in general and this one in particular as sinister/evil/horrible
http://bthedigitalmonochromeforum.runboard.com/t200600
The original image was part of a child's ride so it was certainly not
intended to be sinister/horrible etc.
Coming back to your images above ....
I much prefer the last one. My experience (which may not be the same as yours) is that I pretty soon get fed up with the weird/garish effects of some of the filters etc you can get these days. The last one is most pleasing (to me.) But applying the thought processes outline above you could revisit all your images and process them to generate a particular response in the viewer. Not easy I know as it took me about a year to work out what to do with the Clown image
If you have Elements then another approach might be to visit Elements Village
http://www.elementsvillage.com/forums/index.php
and you will see that there are 'challenges' on there which provide you with a starting image and you apply the challenge and then see how what you have done compared with those of others - no prizes it is just for fun.
Likewise there are other threads which give a particular technique/tutorial that you can apply to your own existing images.
All of this is good stuff that could help you direct your processing to produce what you want rather than something at random (which is what I used to do but that may not apply to you
)
