Young Ham
by Kodak

Comment by tnun:
he is the sunshine.

Young Ham
by Kodak

Comment by posthumous:
great smile. this is one of those snapshots that is actually art. one of those snapshots that future strangers will be fascinated by. the way sunlight naturally spotlights the child is fascinating and funny and beautiful.

Hal 2022
by Kodak

Comment by glad2badad:
I like the approach you took with this image. The comment you made in the "Photographer's Comments" is so true! :-)

One thing that could have made this a little stronger, IMO, would have been to try and reduce the glare on the headlight housing. Either a polarizing filter (at the time of image capture), or possibly the use of 'clarify' in post would have worked.

Whataya Mean, There's No Tooth Fairy?
by Kodak

Comment by JulietNN:
I keep coming back to this photo. Here is a thing that I do, I make a tunnel with my hand when looking at a photo, making it bigger or smaller to see if a crop would be a good idea. For this and huge close up crop would have had such an impact on the viewer in my opinion. It would have just shown the face, maybe an ear cropped out. Try it out and see if you like the results of the hand tunnel. (I have to come up with a better name than hand tunnel))

Twirl
by Kodak

Comment by Neat:
Congrats on your first ribbon. I'm guessing this is legal.

Twirl
by Kodak

Comment by jomari:
Beautiful effect. Congrats on the red.

Twirl
by Kodak

Comment by Kodak:
Thank you all for the votes. My first time finishing in the top 3. Needless to say I am very happy, I have always been so impressed with the artist ability of everyone on the site. This image was created using Photoshop filters. I will list them below.

Convert Image to Smart Object

Applied the Mezzotint Filter set to Pixelate Choosing Long Strokes
Apply Radial Blur Filter set to zoom, Apply this filter 3 times to get a clean image.
Apply Twirl Filter set to Distort, Twirl. Apply desired amount of effect.

Duplicate Smart Object

Apply Twirl Filter set to Distort, Twirl.
Apply desired negative amount of effect to match the Original Smart Object. The Duplicate is now swirling in the opposite direction.

Blend both Smart Objects by using the Layer Blend Mode.
Set mode to Normal and use Darken or Lighten or Pin Light, I use Darken. I experimented with this.

There was a lot of work to do that I am leaving out such as the original image was too large to process fast enough so I worked with reduced copies and upscaled when I was completed.

I know this may not be enough information but it is readily availabel.

Twirl
by Kodak

Comment by Barroness:
This is stunning, Congratulations 10 from me my favorite.

Twirl
by Kodak

Comment by bjoern:
I'm curious what it is and how you did that - I hope there will be some explanation.

Twirl
by Kodak

Comment by Barroness:
A terrific image, meets the challenge beautifully.