One Four Challenge Feb Week 3

This is the photo I am going to use this month.

Each week I’m going to begin with some sort of distortion of this photo and see if I can produce an interesting and pleasing artistic image.

For week three I began in Sagelight with a plug-in to smooth the image and then applied a median filter.  In PS Elements 8 I distorted it using polar to rectangle and rotated it 90 degrees

 I applied poster edges, liquified it and played with it and added soft focus to the ‘water’ areas.  I continued to adjust using liquefy, vibrancy and dodge and burn to adjust colour, movement and contrast

I applied median filter again to the water to make it softer and more flowing and lastly, applied a canvas texture.   This is the result for Week 3

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  This is the result for week 2

Here is week one.

I began with a polar coordinates distortion 

I liked the stark split of dark and light and decided to work with that.  I cropped it and then used the power box controls in Sagelight to blend the light, added a soft focus, because I like it, and played with the tone blender controls.  To give more balance to the composition I used the dodge and burn to darken the lower right quadrant.  I intensified the blue and adjusted the other colours aiming for a nice balance.  Using the vignette controls I practically blacked out the lower left quadrant and declared it finished, for this week.   For  me there is the sense of looking into the blue beyond, into a hidden galaxy.

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One Four Challenge Feb Week 3 – hosted by Robyn at Captivate Me