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Nobody Home, by Marty Yawnick

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Hollywood, California
January 21, 2011
Toolbox: MonoPhix, Crop Suey (2x), Tiffen Photo fx

One of my favorite captures in a long time. A nice thing about shooting on Hollywood Blvd. is that you never have to worry about passers-by getting out of the way of your shot if that’s what you want.

This was originally nicely and simply processed with Instagram. I wanted something a little larger than 612×612 pixels and started to recreate the image using other apps, but decided somewhere along the way to make minor tweaks.

This is a subtley apped image. I thought the original photo was pretty strong with minimal apping. MonoPhix at the 0.00 setting on both highlights and shadows comes pretty close to recreating the black & white tones of Instagram’s Inkwell filter. I matched the square crop in Crop Suey. I used Tiffen Photo fx to add film grain (for a guy who shoots digital exclusively, I really love film grain) and then add a subtle wide angle lens distortion to the outer parts of the image. One more crop to clean up the edges.

I was working with a version of this image where I applied a simple white border in FX Photo Studio. I like how FX Photo Studio creates adjustable borders outside the image — I don’t lose pixels from frames that creep into an image. I decided not to “contain” it within any type of border and let the image flow outside the frame.

Life streamed past the silent receiver of the pay phone. There was nobody home.

=M=

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Nobody Home (Original Instagram image), by Marty Yawnick

Marty Yawnick

Marty is a self-employed graphic designer in the Fort Worth/Dallas Metroplex. He is an avid Rangers baseball, Chicago Cubs, Packers and Highbury Arsenal fan. In addition to capturing random moments with whatever camera is close by (usually his iPhone), his other interests include coffee, film, music, and traveling in seats 5E and 5F with his fiancé.

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