Today we’d like to introduce you to Tyler Germaine.
Hi Tyler, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Creativity has been in my blood since I was old enough to read. My mom, being a massive book enthusiast, passed on her love of reading to me at an early age, setting up a foundation for fantasy and imagination. Something I am eternally grateful for. Stories became a priority for me. I wasn’t the kid who had cable or a computer, so my time was outside, in my head, dreaming up whatever felt right in the moment.
This curiosity bled into the rest of my life. I became a student of music at 8. After seeing my grandfather play guitar as an infant, I decided I needed to explore that medium. I began taking piano lessons and quickly moved into percussion, a practice I would stick with through college. Although I was never good enough to make a career out of music, I learned an incredible lesson in understanding art, that it can be whatever the human imagination is capable of creating. Being a percussionist especially drilled this into me, where, from a young age, I was exposed to nontraditional composers such as Steve Reich and John Cage as well as non-Western music such as African drumming and eastern music.
Music established a lot of the way I think, but it wasn’t my calling. Instead, visual art walked its way into my life at the age of 12. I was spending the night at a close friend’s house when another friend of ours showed up with a camcorder he had bought a garage sale. It was just a toy to us, but we loved it. We made our first video that night, then another one the next day, and then another one almost every weekend after that until we graduated high school. We were enamored.
This was around 2006, the same year YouTube entered into the world. I was immediately captured by it. This was at a time when the idea of making a living through social media had not come around, but it did provide an opportunity for young creators to show their ideas to a large audience. Including me. Having that inspiration and now the knowledge of how to make a video set me on my path. I would go on to taking classes in high school and then eventually majoring in Film at Texas Christian University, graduating in 2017.
I went on to enter into the commercial film scene in DFW that year. But that wasn’t my end all. At the same time I graduated, I bought my first camera, a Canon 70D. I got it purely to shoot video; photography never even crossed my mind. This was January of 2017. I only know that because it was the same time Donald Trump was elected president. One of his first acts as president was instating the travel/Muslim ban. A protest was created at TCU, put on by the theological school, arguing against the persecution of religion. My best friend and I decided to join. As I was walking out of my house, I grabbed my camera. I had never shot a photo, let alone used the camera, as I had only gotten in a couple of days before. But once we made it to the protest, I knew I had to capture this. So, I threw it on full auto and started taking photos. Suddenly, I found my medium, whether I knew it or not.
That day showed me not only the importance of documenting but the power of photography. Especially over the following years after massive and unprecedented events plagued our country. I understood the power of the image in showing the world what we as individuals face every day.
I grew my skills as a photographer fairly quickly. I had a small knowledge in understand cameras from the film industry, and taking photos daily helped push me further than I ever planned to go. Around that time, I took a huge interest in art. I loved the way painters were able to express any sort of scene with profound personality using brush techniques, color, and shape. I became jealous as I was not a painter. But I was a newfound photographer. I dedicated myself to learning how to use a camera as expressively as a painter uses a brush.
Now, I am a professional photographer and artist. I have had the fortune of working with well-known brands and names such as Dickies, Pepsi, the Dallas Cowboys and Texas Rangers, Leon Bridges and Kendrick Lamar. I’ve also been featured in galleries like The Pool and Love Texas Art in Fort Worth.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It was never going to be an easy road. Breaking into art world, let alone film and photography, is by no means a simple thing. I spent several years bartending alongside building my career. I can’t tell you how many 10-hour shoot days would go straight into a 7-hour bar shift into 3 hours of sleep then repeating. It took years to be able to go freelance full time, and i wasn’t able to do that until august, 2019.
I had that golden feeling of doing what I love for a total of 5 months before the pandemic set in. My entire career was wiped out for about 7 months, I had to go back to bartending to make ends meet. It was a hard time, but in 2021, I was able to make my way back into the industry, this time fully set on working as a photographer.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I consider myself a conceptual photographer. While I’ll always have my commercial work, my goal is always to see how far I can push the camera and all the tools that come along with photography. I love the whimsical, the weird, and the colorful. My photography and work continue outside of the image, oftentimes into the frame or the way art is presented.
I also practice several other mediums in order to express the full abilities of photography, including woodworking, screen printing, video work, etc.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
It’s a simple definition. As long as I am creating and learning, then I’m content. That was the gift my mom taught me from the beginning. Failure is the better way of learning and creating for yourself and is more gratifying than making it into the MoMA if you know what you’re doing. I’m happy to have reached the level I have, not because I get to brag or work with large named clients or have work featured in high places, but because I am constantly being given the opportunity to grow in my craft. And that’s about as much as I can ask for
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.superdupertyler.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/super_duper_tyler/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y%3D
Image Credits
James Kung
