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EXCLUSIVE took them out of their element and you're kind of making a little cake of fun," he explains thoughtfully. Is there a message behind the blood and everything? "Yeeeaahh!" Tyler states with emphasis. "There's a specific message in all of it — it depends on the photo. I get a lot of very detailed, long emails from people. They're really amazing. A lot of it is that people want to experience life, they want adventure, they want to not do the same thing everyday… —a lot of people get that from my photos. People are like, 'I saw this photo and then I decided, I'm going to go to Paris next week.' And then they go. If you can invoke adventure, then that's amazing," he expresses passionately. And painting "Eat Me" on a live (rented) cow featured at his gallery, what was the meaning behind that? I ask. "People are often so offended by the idea of eating meat and by the actual animal, but all these people eat meat, they just don't want to think of where it comes from. I wanted to kind of put that in their face. It's not an anti- meat eating thing. It's a You-eat-meat-that's-what-it-is. Even my friends who are vegetarians and hardcore vegans didn't get offended by it. I was wondering if people were going to get offended and they didn't. Maybe they will now," he says. Inspiration for his work is not derived from outside motivators but found through life's interactions and his imagination. "I don't look at other people's work. I don't do anything like that." Tyler attributes his following and success to the "Myspace days." During this time, many, especially actors, took notice and contacted him through email wanting to shoot with him. People were talking. The buzz around Tyler secured him a meeting with a major magazine. "I met with the head of one of the pretty big magazines and I said listen, 'You guys gotta get in on this MySpace thing. You gotta get in on the internet thing.' They asked me what I wanted to do, how I wanted to shoot people. I told them. They laughed in my face and told me it was a waste of time.'" In opposition with Tyler's vision and how he chooses to shoot ("however I want") —they simply didn't see it. "The owner of the magazine looked me in the face and told me, 'You will never shoot a celebrity outside of the studio. You will never get them to do anything strange or weird –ever," he recalls. Tyler would not disclose which magazine is now eating their words, but did say, "It's a very cutting-edge magazine —one of the ones that push the boundaries a little bit. One of the things that I always say about people is: You have to find value before there's worth. It's one of the most important things because I find people before they're famous. I find people just starting out… Shiloh [Fernandez], for instance, has lived with me. I've known him for seven years. I've watched him go from nothing but short film to starring in a major movie. I saw the value in him before there was worth. Most people don't see that, they're like: Either you're famous or you're not or you're worth something or you're not. They don't see where this can maybe go." Because commercial work tends to curb his artistic freedom, Tyler chooses to turn away "95% of the work they toss" at him. "I do the occasional ad campaign every now and again. It just has to be the right thing. I don't just like to take the picture. I think about it as an entire piece of art. What are we going to do with this? How's it going to affect people? I'm also weary because people always say they want something different but then when you give them something different they're scared. I've done full-on crazy jobs in the past that never came out." Tyler's concepts and shooting preferences, which take anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours to produce, that petrified the "cutting- edge magazine" are working out well for him. And, the subjects LOVE it. "The thing that I always hear the first time I shoot with people is, 'I have never experienced anything like that before.' In the beginning, I was like, 'How can that be true?' I shot Carmen Electra "I'm kind of reclusive. I'm always working. The only people I'm ever around are the people I'm working with or the people I'm being introduced to, to work with. I think there's an often misconception of me. People think that I'm crazy, for sure. I am crazy in the sense of normalcy. I don't sleep. I'm a very strange guy; I guess you could say that about my life and my eating habits… I'll just put it to you like this, I've never eaten a banana, I've never eaten a pear, and I've never had coffee. Never had a beer, never had alcohol, ever. Somebody offered me $10,000 to drink a beer." (He just recently tried peanut butter for the first time.) "Yeah, it's by choice. I can afford peanut butter, I just don't want it." once —she's done more photo shoots probably than anyone... She's like, 'That's the most fun I've ever had on a photo shoot.' And I was like, 'That's gotta be bullshit.' Then, when she broke it down to me, it made sense. She was like, 'Every time I do anything, it's always on their terms, their rules… and this was us playing, having fun.' I think that's what it is. People have fun. They come back and they do it in the middle of the night. Its like, 'Let's leave this party…'" His close-ties to his celeb subjects have pushed him into acting and movies. "I just did a movie called, The Day Before Christmas. I played a killer Santa Claus. I'm going to NY to do a part in Syrup, Shiloh is in." And, he has returned to directing, this time feature films, thanks to Dan Dubiecki (producer of Juno, Thank You for Smoking, Up in the Air). "I met him [Dan] awhile back and we've been working on putting together a movie. I think we finally found the right one." Tyler is directing and starring as Charles Manson in the biopic, Eyes of a Dreamer, which he's currently casting for. Tyler is also in the midst of finishing up his photography book, "The Dirty Side of Glamour"—where you can "see all the crazy stuff I've been keeping." That's not all —if all goes as planned, Tyler hopes that the pilot for a TV show following his life, that they just shot and turned in, will get picked up. For a sample of Tyler Shields' brilliant work, peruse the following pages. The only place to acquire his art is directly through him at www.tylershields.com "I try to deal with everything. I have two full- time assistants that work and live with me. If it's not me, it's them. I like it to be a personal thing." His last gallery exhibit pulled in up to $80,000 for his seven-footers. Backstreet Boy A.J. McLean and Jenna Ushkowitz from Glee are among the celebs that can say they own a genuine Tyler Shields piece. Artists, actors, investment bankers from London are amid the collectors procuring this masterful photographer's work. ML MIAMI LIVING 39