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| TopherGentry
TopherGentry
♂️
[18986337]
[2011-09-12 16:44:45 +0000 UTC]
"Make sure to tip your waitress.."
(United States)
# Statistics
Favourites: 285; Deviations: 72; Watchers: 161
Watching: 157; Pageviews: 16016; Comments Made: 889; Friends: 157
# Interests
Favorite visual artist: Jim Marshall, Ansel Adams & Vivian MaierFavorite movies: The Big Labowski, Outside Providence, Office Space and many many others
Favorite TV shows: Workaholics(I grew up with the Blake and Kyle lol)The office and SOA
Favorite bands / musical artists: All music but country
Favorite books: I am a Potter head through and through
Favorite games: MW3
Favorite gaming platform: xbox (gt: a teddy bearrrr)
Tools of the Trade: Nikon D7000, Lightroom and Photoshop
# About me
So there I am, on my very routine weekday morning drive to work. I have the tunes up pretty loud, my window open and a cigarette in hand when I see him. A heavier set gentleman with shoulder length greasy brown hair and glasses in the driver seat of a early nineties Ford Exploder. I meet eyes with him just as he attaches his burly SUV into the side of my car. He had taken a very wide turn out of the post office to my right. Scraped my two week old car from the front right quarter panel, across both doors and caught a little piece of my rear quarter panel as well. I surprised myself and reacted fairly quickly. The blinker got slapped on as i pulled over with the Exploder close behind. My cell phone made an appearance to snap a few pictures of the damage and his license plate. We exchanged info, shook hands and awkwardly walked back to our vehicles to get about our day. I had never been in an accident as the driver before but it just seemed so simple. The guy was apologetic but we didn't beat around the bush at all which was good because I am really terrible at small talk. Beyond terrible actually. It's embarrassing. Back to the point; I didn't really look at this as a shitty situation.... I mean, I did just have somebody crash into my brand new car.... I was late to work and had to explain the story 19 fucking times but hey.... I am an optimist. I looked at it as my way into my something I had wanted to get into for a really long time. I took my insurance money from the accident, let the side of my car keep that crimped look and bought my first DSLR.When I was 14 years old, I saw a documentary on Ansel Adams. Yeah, the photographs that he takes are amazing and he is really well known but what really caught my attention was that he was saying he would see his post processing before he ever took a photo. This struck a chord with me because I had always been able to look at things and somehow my brain could add or remove images from the scene. The best attempt I have at trying to describe this would be if you looked at somebody with a full head of hair and then able to picture them bald without ever removing any hair follicles. I could do that, as well as change colors of shirts, logos, trees.... I could recreate or adjust my environment in a way. It came across as a useless hidden talent of mine I didn't much understand. I always thought it was strange so when I learned that Ansel Adams was doing something more similar to what I was doing than I had ever heard before.... My interest in photography really began. The tiny 32GB hard rive in my computer was filling up quickly from downloading tons of photos off the web. Landscape, street, reportage.... You name it, I was looking it up. I ended up asking my folks about their ideas on photography whilst secretly trying to plant the "it would be so awesome to have a camera" seed in the back of their minds. Now my parents are far from rich and can smell a feeble attempt of future begging a mile away. I was lead straight into how expensive being a hobbyist photographer really is and how there is no way they were taking the risk of dropping 500 bones on a possible teenage phase. It was grueling and I wasn't winning the battle any time soon so I picked up the next best thing to a camera. I got a hold of a pirated version of Photoshop 3 and went to town.
Photoshop opened a whole new world of opportunities to me as well as countless numbers of sleepless nights. When it comes to art or any type of craft with my hands.... I am extremely awkward. Seeing what I wanted to have as the end result for any drawing or non-digital artistic fabrication was a piece of cake but my fingers like to act like a house cat and just not give a fuck, doing their own thing. There is some sort of disconnect between my thoughts and hands when it comes to stuff like that. It is pathetic. On the computer though.... Man! It was on! Control Z (hotkey for Undo) is a godsend! There was no going back to burning one whole pencil eraser for each drawing. Photo editing, manipulation and abstract digital painting became my creative outlet of choice.
Graphic design is the shit. Being able to communicate without words but instead, some subliminal level of intelligence to view and interpret colors and shapes in a type of universal language?! Give me a break. That is awesome! I was all in. I spent the last 6 years of my teens as well as the first 6 of my twenties just messing around in Photoshop. I even went to school for a whopping semester and a halfish for Graphic Design. I was convinced it was what I wanted to do as a career for a pretty hefty chunk of my life. I was way wrong. Once I caught a glimpse of being tucked away in a corpse gray cubicle, my headphones, two giant monitors, a keyboard, a tablet and being zoned the fuck out while perfecting a restaurant menu or some bullshit.... Nope. Not this guy. I have what you call, A.D.D. and that's just a bad gulosh, if you know what I mean. My mind is far too active to sit and do things that don't interest me. If I take part in something of little or no interest to me, it is just a matter of time until my mind takes me to something or somewhere interesting. See what I mean.... I just had a mini A.D.D. rant, about A.D.D.! So where were we? Oh yes, graphic design and how it was no longer my thang. Well, it wasn't and still isn't but all of that Photoshop practice did come in handy. There aren't many photographers that I know of that learned how to edit photos before they ever took any of their own. I had been editing photos 10 years before I ever picked up a DSLR. That has had a major impact in how I see and make photos. It was really motivating to think I had this little bit of an upper hand. I definitely felt like I had a major head start on anybody else starting the same time I did because no matter how long it took to understand how to take photos, I would already know how to get my desired result out of Photoshop. So as soon as I made the decision to buy a DSLR, which was heavily influenced by my best friend, Brooke Merrick.... I immediately dove head first into the "how to" with my camera.
If you continue to read my blogs after I've put you through this, you will see me refer to YouTube as YTU which stands for YouTube University. YouTube kicks sliced breads ass with both hands tied behind its back, in my opinion. Besides a few things like, heart surgery or where to find the black market.... YouTube has a "how to" for just about everything. I utilize YTU more and more because the amount of knowledge that is out there in the interwebs, just waiting to be shared is unfathomable. Lucky for us interested in photography, YTU has the best photo curriculum of any school in the history of the world. You give yourself as much homework as you want. You can choose to participate at your own convenience and the best part.... It is FREE! My point to this A.D.D. fueled rant is that I took every bit of this to my advantage. Day in and day out I was doing research on photography tips and tricks. All of the "how to" videos I could take in a 24 hour period. Yes, work hours included. My performance at my 9-5 went straight down the shitter because all I was doing at work was watching FroKnowsPhoto and DigitalRev TV videos on YouTube with an ear bud hidden under my headset. All day long. Camera reviews, interviews, unboxing’s, portfolios, tips, tricks, whatever.... If it had anything to do with photography, I had, or was going to watch it. I started to become very passionate about learning my craft as much as just taking part in it. I was proudly shooting manual by my second outing with my camera and never looked back. In a very short time, my understanding of how to manually adjust my camera had surpassed other, more experienced, photographers that I know and they began to ask me for help with understanding that "M" mode better. Now, I am not the best in the world, nor do I claim my methods are the best, quickest, or what you should do 100% of the time but I do know my way around a camera.
Ok, so besides being mildly obsessed with photography, hot and bothered by design, disordered by the deficit of my attention and a total hand craft failure.... There is a bit more to me. I am a teacher, motivator, good friend, weird Uncle, day dreamer, pied piper of cats (no, it’s not a metaphor.... It is just true and strange. I don't know why they follow me), a firm believer in things happening for a reason, musician, word smith, pun appreciator/creator, over analyzer, hopeless romantic(key word there is "hopeless"), inside joker, awkward, human, terrible small talker, occasional rapper, shower singer and sadly.... I can't grow a moustache. Most people say it’s a blessing.... Ha. Getting rid of beard envy, now that would be a blessing! That is a whole other days’ worth of writing and I will save you that rant for now. There is a ton more about me that will come out eventually but my bio started feeling like it had taken a turn towards a dating website "About Me" for a sec there. Whoa. My apologies. We will just say that is a solid nutshell summary of who I am. Now, if you want a date or to just say hi, please hit me up! I love connecting with people who share my same passions and I am willing to get all photo jargoned out anytime of the day! Cheers.
# Comments
Comments: 390
can i have your account ~colma ? that's my character's name
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I promised I'd show you as soon as I bought it! I wanted the D7000 like you, but the D7100 came right on time with my tax refund lol.
[link]
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Hope the day has been a happy one, and that you are doing well!!
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Thanks a lot for the Llama badge .
(And sorry for the late reply on that . )
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A very belated 'Thank you' for the 
I got overwhelmed with messages, but I figured late was better than never.
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I had forgotten to say thank you for the badge. I never leave anyone behind.
So, thank you very much. From the bottom of my heart.
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Hey dude! School me on 500px sometimes. How does their website thing work? I know you pay like $50 per month, but what about the domain and storage. Is everything hosted on their website?
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Yeah mang... You have to have a domain name already through something like godaddy.com then on 500px, they will walk you through it step by step. there is even videos I think lol.
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I may do it next year when my membership with webs.com expires. I paid like 50 per year for my website, so it's about the same. I like the simplicity in the 500px layout though... plus, you don't have to work on the coding yourself.
I did my site all by myself and while I am proud of it, it would be better if I didn't have to work on it to update it haha.
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Thank you for the llama dear! Your gallery is simply amazing!!!
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Hi! I'm a Gentry just like you @_@
But that's not my point x)
I came to tell you that your gallery is AMAZING!
Awesome shots all around.
Feel proud. : )
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Thank you fellow Mr. Gentry 
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You're welcome XD
>_>
<_<
*is only 16*
:l
*has a cola* :3
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Thanks for the Llama you have very nice page here
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Thanks for the llama badge. Have one back. I'm also going to watch you. I always love watching Photographers from the same area as me
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Thanks ya for the badge!! Sorry for the late responce!
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Topher, may I just begin by saying, bravo. Your work is brilliant and consistently alive. I can already see you are a member to dozens of groups, but if by chance you have room for more, please consider us. Our group focus is culture. Take care.
[link]
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WoW..your gallery is AWESOME
loved your snaps
they are superb 
rock on..
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