High Contrast graphics - based on Elinor Stecker

I bought a copy of a book today by Elinor Stecker titled "how to create and use high contrast images", it was published in 1982 by Fisher Publishing in the US. The book was written when Lithofilm was used and I'm not sure if this film is made these days, Kodak was one of the main suppliers and I don't even know if they still sell film for consumers anymore in the digital age. Lithofilm was high contrast black and white film where no grey was rendered, so the contrast factor was incredibly high. We've all seen lots of images using this kind of technique. The way the images are produced today is digitally and this makes the range of options for creating images much greater today than it was with film and chemicals. But it's a tribute to the photographers, graphic artists and technicians who worked with this film that high contrast images are still everywhere we look today. I wonder whether Elinor Stecker ever wrote an update to her book for the digital photographic medium?

In an attempt to use some of the ideas presented in the book, I've used Gimp on a couple of my photographs. Hope you like the results below. Hopefully I'll get better at this, I was just playing around this time and having some fun.