Reinventing the city

Lately, I've been going back to some of my photos of New York City and applying a technique to achieve results that are more like the motion blur series I am now doing here in Florida. 

I generally start with two or three layers of the city image in Photoshop and then apply some motion blur to one or two of them. Next I put layer masks on the blurred layers and paint out some areas to allow parts of the lower layers to come through. This gives me a mix of sharp and blurred, and/or a cross mix of blurs where one is vertical, or horizontal, or on a diagonal for contrast.

What I am trying to achieve with this technique is to capture more of an abstract essence of an urban scene than the actual city, itself.