Taking Stock ?

A lot of the work I've been doing lately has centred around working with people - in portraiture, and in events - and whilst I really enjoy that aspect of photography, I have been thinking that perhaps I need to push myself to explore other genre's too.  I also want to start pushing myself to use different techniques - I am very aware that my photography is nearly always representational, its the style I prefer - but the idea of experimentation, with not only post production to create different effects, but also to be a little more creative at the point of taking the images, has a lot of appeal for me.  I've been very lucky, lately, and met a lot of incredibly creative people, who I admire immensely - and seeing their work has inspired me to gather my courage and at least try to move towards a far more creative and artistic approach to some of what I do - while I think I'm 'creative',  the term 'artistic' is not one I'd usually apply to myself. 

At this stage, however, I also think that I need to consider any potential commercial use that any images I produce can be geared towards .  It would be fantastic if I could sell any images as prints, perhaps as wall art, but I know how competitive that area is, and I am not confident that the work I produce is that good .  So, I'm looking at the idea of selling some images as stock, via sites on the internet.

So - for a few days, I've been playing around with a variety of different bits of equipment and settings on my camera, and post production techniques.  The equipment has been in the form of filters - I bought a set of mounts, for use on 3 different lens, and a small selection of filters, several weeks ago, and I decided it was time to really play around with them, and see what I could come up with. I also played heavily with camera settings, and in post production, I pushed one or two effects to a far greater extent than I would normally go.  The following images are produced using one, or a combination, of the following - built in red or blue filter on my camera settings, a selection of cookin filters (including sunset, red and ND ),  using a set of macro filters, boosting sharpness/sats/contrast on the camera whilst keeping ISO as low as possible, techniques like locked off motion, and post production effects, such as unsharp mask, contrast and levels.

These images are very different from the style that I usually veer towards - I like strong colour and contrast, but to me, these are far more creative in an artistic sense, than the type of image I generally produce . I actually really like them, and have really enjoyed trying to push myself in a 'new' direction - I've always had a hankering to be able to produce artwork, and these feel like the closest I've come to that point.

Whether these will sell as 'stock' images remains to be seen - looking at the huge variety of stock images out there, the range covers everything from the mundane to the very abstract, so I am finding it very hard to judge .  Any feedback or constructive advice/criticism would be appreciated, by the way :)

Whatever happens, I have really enjoyed pushing myself to be more creative, and its an area that I hope I can continue to develop and explore.