Interview With Kieran Wallace

The blog team speaks to digital photography and radio production student Kieran Wallace about his work and courses, and why you should study at the University Of Chester.

A: “Who are some artists that inspire you?”

K: “Ahh!! I don’t know!”

A: “It can be painters as well, it can be anything.”

K: “I don’t know, usually it depends on what I’m working on. It depends on the project. So if I’m working on a fine art project obviously I’ll be looking at more fine art styled artists. But if I just want to be silly and look around… [on] my Instagram I just follow a bunch of people online. So if I just want to do stuff in my free time I usually just look at them for inspiration. But literally, I just look at so many that I can’t think of their names at the minute.”

A: “Are there any currently that you’re loving, people that you’re following on Instagram?”

K: “Damon Baker is one I really like, he’s a photographer. He mainly does celebrity portraits, but they’re dark and gritty. He uses either a really high ISO, or he just turns the grain up in Photoshop. I really like his style - it’s kind of similar to mine, because I like adding grain.”

A: “What is your favourite work that you have produced this year?”

K: “So, photography, my favourite work that I’ve created is for my digital multimedia project, because that’s got me to be more arty. I struggle with commercial, and I’m more artistic and creative, which sounds really vain, I know, but… I just enjoy it, creating stuff that would be aesthetically pleasing, and not having a purpose behind it. I prefer not having a set briefing, like, “You have to do this” - I prefer just being told, “This is your project, this is the kind of style - go crazy”, so that’s what I do.

“For fine art, I did lots of different things - I basically based each shoot off [of] a poem that I would find, and it’s all just about the same poets. There was one about beauty, and choking on… it’s difficult to say what it was. Basically I’d just envision it with flowers, and I had someone choking up flowers out of their mouth. There were other ones about being empty, which is a really good one. I’ve done a skin edit, a skin rip edit on Photoshop, so it looks like your skin’s been ripped open and on the inside it’s just empty.

“But I think one of my favourite ones was an impromptu, last-minute decision before the deadline. It was a day before it - I bought a bridesmaid dress, navy blue, because the shoot was

based on freedom. Technically it was two shoots in one - I used the same model and the same dress because I had last-minute inspiration. As soon as I got back to mine I was like, “The shoot’s not over”. So the first one was about freedom. We had her in a field, isolated, but also embracing it - that’s

"You need to have an open attitude... when you’re creating photography..."

what I wanted to create with it. My favourite one afterwards was when we got back to my room, and I was like, “You know what, we’re just going to try this thing out for a minute”. So I had all these foldable moth print out kind of things, because one poem was saying that you could be a beautiful butterfly, and surrounded by moths, and you could try to be like them, but it won’t change how beautiful and unique you are yourself. So I just dotted them, and stuck them in the person’s hair. I had two of that - I had one mid frame, so it was shoulders and her head, and then I used that, cropped it, so there was a bit more dead space of the wall, and I cropped up so the bottom of it was just underneath her eye. Similar to how Brandon Woelfel done, but he done it with butterflies, and an artsy pop one, but I wanted to put a gothic, dark spin on it, so I used the moths instead. Angsty.”

A: “What are three essentials that you need to have when you are either creating photographs or when you are editing?”

K: “Essentials is basically… having the equipment, availability is everything, especially when it’s near deadlines. You have to make sure you have what you want, when you want it, and just take extra lenses with you. That’s what I did for the last one, I took two extra lenses and played about using wide angles, and a 50mm one as well.

“Another thing I’d say when you’re creating is - it sounds stupid, but you’ve got to think with an open mind. You can’t think you can’t do that because it’ll look weird or stupid, or you don’t know if it’ll be that. Just do it, because sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But if it doesn’t work, you have that to work from. You know that wouldn't work, you see that doesn’t work, but what can you do to make it better? You need to have an open attitude about everything you approach when you’re creating photography.”

A: “And there’s beauty in fuck-ups.”

K: “Exactly. And even the best shots that get taken are by accident. 100%.

A: What is your favourite form of procrastination when working?

K: Usually, my procrastination consists of scrolling through Twitter and Instagram. Sometimes, when I’m properly trying to procrastinate, I’ll make an entirely new music playlist to listen to. And it’ll literally just be the same songs, but in a different order, with a different title, and maybe a couple of new songs in it. What else do I like to do to procrastinate? Netflix as well, it’s just easy. Basic things to do mainly, because I don’t have a TV licence, so the only thing I can watch is Netflix.”

A: “Where are some places or things that you have been to or seen in the North that have inspired you creatively?”

K: “See usually I don’t go anywhere to be inspired.”

A: “Or things that you have seen, whilst you have been living in our side of the world.”

K: “I don’t know, usually… I’ve gone to the art gallery in Liverpool. That was a really good day, I can’t remember what it was called but…”

A: “Was it the modern one, Tate?”

K: “Could be, it was over a year ago. But we went there, we wanted to go but we went out the night before, so the memory is very hazy. I just remember looking at all those different things. Another thing I felt really inspired by was in Warrington Museum. I went in there, and there was a local artist, like a texture/fabric artist, and she worked with multimedia forms to create this giant A2 or A1 sized canvas pieces. There was a close-up of this one woman, and it was like half her face and then her hair completely braided off, but you could look at it as though it braided hair. And I was like, “That’s really cool!”

A: What made you choose this course?

K: I wanted to do photography, but I messed up my A-Levels, due to reasons I’m not going to say. I got B and two C’s, which isn’t awful, but I was meant to get higher. So nowhere with a photography degree did I have high enough UCAS points, and if I just wanted to do three years of undergrad, which, going into an undergrad to do a foundation year and then an extra three years, I just didn’t think I’d end up sticking through all of that. So I saw this and I was like, “Let’s do this!”, and I was like, “It really looks fun”. I thought I’d give that a go and do it as a combined. And everyone’s like, “That’s such a weird combined subject”, and I’m like, “I know, but I can’t help it!”

A: “What made you choose photography?”

K: “So I’ve always loved art. Basically, when I got to my GCSE project, when I was doing GCSE art, we got a new teacher halfway through the year. Didn’t like her, but then I ended up being best friends with her. We were talking, and we both… so there was this one project I did, it was a project in texture, but on the theme of depression, and mental health kind of stuff. Because it was texture, I had to take photographs of different types of textures. My dad had a DSLR so I just went round the house, because we had plenty of different things of textures. And I printed them all off, stuck them in my work book, gave it to my teacher, then I went to the after school club,

because I’d always do that. She just came, plopped the book on my desk saying, “I don’t know where you got these images from, but they’re not yours”. And I was like, “They are, though. I have the SD card with me!” And she was like, “What? You took them? They’re just really good!” They’re just random things!

“But also it was because, as much as I love doing arty stuff, I’m not very gifted with being neat, and basically when I went to go look at sixth form, for college, there was a photography option or there was a fine art option. Fine art wasn’t going to link any of the photography in with it, and when I was looking around at the work, she was like, “Have you seen anything you like here?” I like all of it, it’s all really amazing work, but it’s not stuff that I can do, and it’s not my style. But then I went to the photography workshop there, and I was like, “I’m in love.” So then I just carried on doing that. When we got into it I was a bit unsure about doing it, because I don’t really know about any of this, and there were people in there who were really good at it already, so I was kind of thrown off by that. But I kept trying, and it ended up being the one I got a B for in both years. Funny story, A2 exam, I was an hour and a half late to it, because I forgot I had it! But my teacher was such a legend, he was like, “You know what, I just don’t care, at least you showed up.” Thank you!”

A: “If I were to give you unlimited money and you had access to any equipment, anything you needed, what project would you do?”

K: “Interesting. I would to try working with shoots that had bigger budgets, so I could have a proper make-up artist, proper hair stylist, better props in. But I’d also like the new Nikon camera that’s come out, because it looks really beautiful, but it’s too expensive. I’d like that, but then I’d also like to do beauty around the work, kind of thing. But not portray stereotyped beauty. Use models that you wouldn’t perceive as beautiful. It’d either be that, or there was a similar project where someone went around the world to different countries and they took a photo of what that specific country perceived as beautiful. So I’d like to try something like that. That’s really cool and interesting. I’d like to understand different countries perceptions of beauty.”

A: “Have you looked into anything about South Korea? That’s really interesting because they have a lot of surgeries, and their standards for beauty are really high. It’s common that people our age would have plastic surgery, or double eyelid surgery.”

K: “Interesting.”

A: “Yeah. It’s really weird. And it’s on billboards, in the underground. There’s loads of billboards for plastic surgery. They’re dead harsh, they’re like, “You should got plastic surgery” to their kids.”

K: “I’d be like, “Yes. Give it to me. Make me beautiful”.”

A: “Why do you think somebody should choose this university? Would you recommend it to A-Level students? Would you recommend the photography department?”

K: “I would, yes. But this uni offers two different photography departments, so it depends what kind of photography you want to do. Obviously this campus focuses more on commercial aspects, I think the other is more art and design photography. They also have a dark room over there - I was really good at that, but now I’m out of practice. I don’t know what the one on main campus is like, but I know the one here is really helpful, the lecturers are really helpful. If you show them work, they’ll happily sit down, they’ll look through your work, they’ll suggest different artists for you to look at to help with inspiration for your project, and where to take it next.”

A: “You’re doing the multimedia society. Are you excited for that?”

K: “I’ve handed in the form, to start it going, and I’ve done a sign-up roster thing to establish us as a proper society. I’ve handed that into the SU. We should be hearing from them in the next week or so about budget meetings for next year.”

A: “Why should freshers join?”

K: “Because media is such a massive part of this campus, and it’s the only media society that will exist. It will teach you different skills from the different media departments. If you do photography, you’ve got to work with video, you’ve got to work with audio.”

A: “Which nobody tells you about. Or if you’re like me, you don’t research the course properly. I didn’t know there was a different photography department, I just showed up.”

K: “There’ll just be running sessions that’ll be like skills, so like help with studio, or editing will be there. We’ll run sessions doing basic things, and then if anyone wants help with their work then obviously we’ll be there to help. It’ll be a team of third years running it, so we’ll be there to help, we’ll be experienced, I guess. Two years worth of experience with the course, so we could help out with people’s projects.”

A: “Are you going to hook them up with lecturers or technicians?”

K: “Yeah. I’ll show them the way. Just kidding, no, I don’t know everything. But it’s just like simple stuff that’s hard to get hold of at first. Like the studio is simple to work, but it’s really scary as you go in to it for the first time. And with the radio studios as well, that’s really scary to look at. When you get told to run it, run the desk with the mics and the speakers, and the myriad system. It’s not as bad as it seems.”

A: “What’s your favourite part of the radio department - like running the station, what’s your favourite job to do?”

K: “I think my favourite part is a bit of the producing, but not completely, producing. Because it’s difficult. Producers here would be in charge of running the desk, and the computers, when in a normal radio station it’s the presenter’s job to that, because it’s where the presenter sits with

their mics. But it depends on the station you’re at. I like planning the shows, doing the running orders I don’t mind. Trying to decide creatively what needs to go in a show, what should go in the show, and arranging the interviews is fine, I like doing the interviews. I don’t think I’m amazing at them, but the questions for the interview spring out of my mind, I’m just like, “Ask them this, ask them this”, and I always get told, “That’s a really good question”. But then sometimes I have a really closed question, where you could have expanded on what they said more.”

A: “What’s your favourite part about the radio course?”

K: “My favourite part was probably the production skills. My favourite module I’ve done so far was in the first year, and that’s when you run the Freshers show, and you get put in a team. I got put in a team with my friends, and it was really good. We always had a really good show, even though we wouldn’t have anything planned, we would just try to make it fun. And then we ended up winning an award at the CAT Radio Awards in the first year. The person who decides that is from industry professionals. So the applicant, they get the audio and the written context for it, and they look at it. So we won the best Freshers show last year, which was really fun.

“Another fun part of the first year is if you do radio production combined you get to this radio short forms module, where you get to learn jingles, which are like idents for the station. You learn how to create stuff like that with the sounds. You get to learn how to create radio adverts, because there’s more to radio than live shows - there’s the creating, the adverts, because that’s entirely big companies separate from the stations that do that. That was fun.

“I made a programme trailer for Greg James’ show last year. I made it, right before he switched to doing breakfast, but by the time it was submitted, he had switched to breakfast. So I submitted a programme show that said, “Greg James, 4-7”. I can’t remember what time he used to be on. But that programme trailer was really good. I made it in like half an hour.

“They changed the second year module this year. There’s the advanced radio production, where you’d have to create lots of interviews and bulletins and audio packages, as well as podcasts and an outdoor broadcast. But this year we were given the option of creating a podcast or an outdoor broadcast, so that was good. They showed us how to work the outdoor broadcast kit for that. We had industry professionals come in, we had podcast makers come in, and we spoke to them about how to make a good podcast. And then when we did the other one for second year, the other module, which is where you’re the producer, you don’t present - you’ve got to fit it to the style of the show. We have the Knowledge show, and the VP show. The VP show is all about what’s happening on this campus, or main campus. Knowledge show is all about Warrington, so what’s happening in the North. We’d have ‘what’s on’ bulletins, and saying this is happening here. It’s fun.”

A: “What’s the most bizarre story behind a photo you’ve taken?”

K: “Okay, so I had my friend come round, and I don’t have the image anymore because I lost it, and I lost the entire shoot and all my work from college, but oh well. The one shoot we did was really fun, technically it was two different shoots with two different people. So I filled the bathtub with water for one shoot, and then I added milk, to make cloudy water, and made my friend get into a tub of milky bath water. And then I put seaweed in.”

A: “Did it look cool?”

K: “Yes, it looked very cool. And then the other one I did, it was just plain water, but I had them wearing a white dress, and I made a kind of flower crown in their hair with all these roses. I told them to be asleep, and it was basically saying that they were dead in the water. Those are the main weird ones, can’t do any milky bath shoots anymore.”

A: “Why not?”

K: “Don’t have a bath at home anymore.”

You can follow Kieran's photography work on Instagram here.

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