I thought I'd mess around with some of my shots that are compositionally good, but technically flawed, and see how they'd look with some artistic filters applied. I'm pretty happy with the results! For instance, this one had some extreme motion blur on it. I applied the Poster Edges filter to give it some crispness, then I applied film grain to soften it and brighten it up. I think the result retains the feel of the motion, and with the artistic filters kinda makes it abstract.

I could see this framed and hung on the wall. How about you? Does this work?

Yeah! Definitely.

Megan

I like this kind of treatment in general.

There's a whole school of thought on this which probably got started seriously with Leroy Neiman and his work particularly with Boxing and Horse Racing. Neiman's work wasn't photographic that I'm aware of, but drawing and the graphic repro process that generates this style of image.

A Finnish photog whose first name is Jolo or Joho and his last name escapes me at the moment did some amazing pre Photoshop photos reminiscent of this in the 1970's with Formula One.

I've one image in my PR gallery that is this type of thing, though it is meant to evoke a highly saturated Japanese Watercolor style. The JW are usually far more faded or even one might call them pastel than mine but the stroke and blur is of that school.

One usable technique or filter in these action/sports photos is to apply a very small amount of wind or a directional blur. Some people use a Huge Brush size (the size of or to cover an entrie element in the picture) that is like a wet paint or a splatter brush and select a blur effect and just blur a few pixels or grid jumps in one direction. Set up as an action it is repeatable (the EXACT same direction for everythin is critical) for all the moving elements in a shot.

I like this one even though it contains a GB Packer.

CDP - dr g

I really like what you have done... I actually have done something similiar with my cycling shots that I thought were good, but had some flaws. I find that with action shots that you may setup for the exact shot of what you wanted and even think that it came out like you wanted, but then on screen it is flawed in one way or another, the photos can be save by making it look less like a photo...

Here one of my early ones that I did that people seemed to have liked.

Enjoy
Shane