Hi Simon,

here is a quick test i was talking about; i used parts of your photos and created a displacement map from them and then used them as alphas in ZBrush. So in case you have already purchased ZBrush, this might give you an idea of how to create quickly simple mesh forms which can be further processed. With 3DCoat, for example, you can also import your color photos and then make planar color meshes* out of it.



Hope this helps a bit or two.

*As an example you can see my fractal images:

https://www.behance.net/gallery/26705181/3D-Fractal-models

Regards
Stefan