Kyle Horne

Kyle is a BA (Hons) Photography student and Course Rep at ARU’s Cambridge School of Art. He’s also a music photographer and runs his own online music magazine.

Tell us about your magazine and some of the people you’ve photographed.

I run a music publication called ADRENALINE Magazine. We focus on live concerts, reviews, and interviews with musicians. It's online currently, but I’m hoping to produce print copies during summer.

I mainly photograph concerts, and so far have shot James Bay, KT Tunstall, McFly, Joshua Bassett, and Remi Wolf, to name a few. There've been so many, and that’s just through me contacting the artist, and asking to take their photographs – although sometimes I’ll ask through magazines.

Doing that then inspired me to start my own magazine, giving me to the freedom to shoot the concerts I want, while allowing me to offer opportunities to those who perhaps haven't had the same experience or haven't been able to get a photo pass yet.

Where and what did you study before coming to ARU?

I studied at Dunfermline High School. Dunfermline was the ancient capital of Scotland before Edinburgh, and it’s also the birthplace of Andrew Carnegie.

Scottish and English qualifications work a bit differently, so our courses are one year, while your traditional English A-Levels are two. It's like studying the first year of your A-Level, then deciding whether to do a second year, or pick a different subject instead.

I did a variety of things – photography, music, accounting. It was only in my final year that I decided photography was what I wanted to do.

Did you always know that you would go to university and if not, what changed your mind?

I was never sure what to do: did I want to stay on at school full-time Monday to Friday? Did I want to go and do something enterprising, like starting my own business? Eventually time caught up to me, and I stayed on because I didn't really know what to pick.

In my final year, I was initially looking at taking music further, because I did music all through school. But I took photography as well that year, and realised that’s what I was most interested in. It felt so much more open. When you study and perform music, you get used to a certain genre, whereas in photography there's all these different things you can dabble in and out of.

I mean, at university I've done sports photos for TeamARU; I'm also doing music photography; and in class, we’ve done documentary photography and portraits. The subject is so flexible, so I really wanted to learn more and experiment. And I felt the only way to really be part of a community and learn more, was at university, so that's what I decided to do.

Why did you choose to study at ARU?

To tell you the truth, I didn't know much about the university before coming, but I know now I made a really good choice.

When I applied, there was only one BA Photography degree in Scotland, which I was shocked about! So, I could either go there or do a shorter college course for another year or two, but I just wanted something different.

My application was very last minute because I’d been set on music, but I just got demotivated by it. When the deadline for UCAS came up, my teacher was like “You're doing photography”. So, I thought, fair enough - I only had a week left to apply. And when I applied, it was announced that ARU was THE’s University of the Year.

I also knew my teacher had studied the MA Children's Book Illustration, by some mad coincidence, so I applied, looking at ARU’s virtual tour, and in the April, my mum and I decided to come to England to look around.

I wasn’t a fan of the places most of the universities were in. Some were based in huge cities; some in small towns. Cambridge was the one that stuck out, because while it is a city, parts of it are calm, quiet and peaceful.

What made you want to study photography?

The fact I could be both creative and technical. When I was younger, I was very into microphones, technology, computers, and things like that. Photography has me working with cameras, screens, and most recently: virtual reality! It allows me to combine both the technical settings on a camera with the more creative photo editing process.

A lot of music photography is in the editing. You take a photo, and because of the lighting, it'll be fully red, so you try to edit it to look natural.

During lockdown, I really got involved with music; finding out which artists I liked and which I didn't. I listened to albums from years ago, because I had the time to. Then concerts started happening again, so I was dying to go and support these artists I’d grown to love.

I wanted to turn that passion into a profession - I’d seen younger music photographers online who had a similar journey. They were taking photos at concerts with their phones and posted them on their Instagram. But then they too wanted to make that into something.

I looked at Lloyd Wakefield – he was a big inspiration. He was Harry Styles’ tour photographer, and he had done lots of cool stuff, like using fisheye lenses and being creative with his composition. He’d made these really weird, but cool, creative photos.

He had an online workshop, so I joined that. It ran weekly calls and challenges, which helped me get into the industry; find people who liked the same thing and connect with them.

What opportunities has being part of the community at ARU given you?

In the art school, photography, fine art, and printmaking are so connected. That, I didn't expect. So I'm happy I'm in the position to get to try new things.

I actually guest lectured at the Saturday Art Club, a weekly workshop for 14 to 16 year olds. I designed, led, and taught the photography module, so that was really exciting.

One of my photographs is also going to be featured in the Sustainability Art Prize exhibition.

In the second year we’ll do a lot more collaboration, so it's nice to subtly get to grips with that in the first year, to then prepare for what it's going to be like.

What's the most valuable thing you will take away from your course so far?

It’s a tough question because I’m still in the first year, but I think working with people who are in the same field, being able to consult them and ask them things, especially my lecturers as well.

Because you work for yourself most of the time, even if you're working for a big magazine - 9 times out of 10 nobody else is editing your photos. So working with other photographers, understanding what their workflow is, what they would do in different situations, is really helpful. It helps you get out of that ‘box’.

Sometimes we'll have a workshop where we're all photographing the same subject or using the same lighting.

How do they approach it? I’m present in that scenario, but also standing and observing – what are they doing? How can I learn from these people?

That's just as much part of what university is about, as the formal assessments.

Which aspects of your course have most helped your career development?

So far, the multimedia project - we used photography with other mediums, like projecting images, or putting a story map together. Some people did something online.

I did a 360 video at a concert, which was really exciting.

I also did a full-on installation; making and decorating a room. In the past I’d seen myself as someone who goes to a concert and takes photos, but I realised there's all this other stuff I could be doing too, that allows people to experience my photos differently, rather than just seeing them on their phone or on a wall. They can step into this fantasy world and be transported to another place entirely.

It allowed me to view photography more as an art form, and work with up-and-coming technology, like the 360 cameras; things that might end up being the future of concerts.

Also, because I want to exhibit some of my work at some point, it gave me that career experience too.

What do you hope to do when you graduate?

I don’t think it will always be concerts. When I graduate, I want to work with a record label or an artist. I don't know how the magazine will work in three years’ time. If it's successful as a print copy, I might just want to focus on that entirely.

But at some point, I want to work with an artist on their every campaign - their music videos; editorial magazine shoots; on their album art. And then at their concerts, because you can restrict yourself to concerts. Yes, your Instagram feed looks good, but there's so many other ways to represent music from a photographer’s point of view.

They have their A&R; set designers, make-up artists, and stylists who you would be given a brief to work with, to document the artist’s style. I think that's how it normally works. But I’d also be open and more than happy to come up with a certain aesthetic, style, or brand. I mean, that’s what I’m currently doing with the magazine.

What piece of advice would you give to other students in your field?

The piece of advice I’d give to any photographer would be to just ask. You never know where it's going to lead. Just ask. The worst thing someone can do is say no. I would never have gone to any of these concerts had I not emailed and said “I want to shoot this. Will you let me in? I'll send you the photos. Let me in!” Obviously in a nicer way, ha ha!

I stopped approaching artists and sending them photographs in March last year, because that's when I started joining magazines and they would reach out on my behalf. But I did about 10 bands to start with, and gave them the photos, and then the rest have all been for PR.

Now I approach the artists through my own magazine. We have a huge spreadsheet of concert requests. 25 people work for us, and there are 200 gigs written down just from January. So, it’s definitely a lot. About a third of them get confirmed.

We do, however, get invited to things all the time – I’ve been invited to a record label showcase next month, and there was also a dinner we were invited to, but I gave that to one of our contributors. And we're now doing BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend festival this summer, which is huge because we only started in November!

What is your favourite thing about studying in Cambridge, and what have you learned about it that you didn’t know before?

My favourite thing about Cambridge is that it’s a big city, but there's also small parts where you’re able to sit back and observe things. Believe it or not, I’d say I’m a more introverted person.

Also, it's near London, so I can easily go and shoot all these concerts.

Something I didn't know is that the market here is open almost every day – they only take about four days off a year. One of my projects was on the Cambridge Markets, and that's the photo that's going to feature in the upcoming exhibition in the Ruskin Gallery. The project is about how Cambridge Council are looking at replacing the permanent stalls, so they can easily take them down and use the space for different things. But the stall holders think it's going to wreck business, so they're protesting it and have started a petition.

What projects have you been working on, both on and off the course?

Other than the Cambridge Markets, I've been working on our ‘Zeitgeist project’. Mine is about how education is changing, with a lot of things moving online, and how some people don’t think a traditional education is worth it anymore. It’s kind of ambitious – and maybe even rebellious – considering I’m currently at university, but I think it’s a conversation that needs to be had between both prospective students and institutions. The photographs are all about screens. I've gone into university out-of-hours, and photographed empty lecture theatres with a Teams call on a screen. You can have a lecture theatre background in the Teams grid, so I've got people's faces in a digital lecture theatre within a lecture theatre.

I've also got another uni project about music photography, and a video project about ARU’s badminton team. And of course, my magazine.

An absolute bunch of stuff, but it's fun getting it all done.