Peter Rooney Podcast Episode 20

Joe Lenton: Welcome to the Focused Professional podcast! Today’s special guest lives in Thailand but he’s from the UK. He joined me and various others this year for the UK team for the World Photographic Cup. He is qualified as a Fellow with the BIPP and in 2018 and 2019 he was the MPA international photographer of the year and that’s just a few of the accolades that he has won! I’d like to introduce you to Peter Rooney. Hello, Peter.

Peter Rooney: Hi, Joe. How are you doing?

Joe Lenton: Good, thank you very much. It’s great to be able to talk to you, and thank you very much for coming on to the podcast.

Peter Rooney: Thank you for the invite.

Joe Lenton: So, you’ve moved around a fair bit over the years, and you’re now in Thailand. What has led you to where you are now? How have you ended up living in Thailand as a British expat?

Peter Rooney: I was a qualified scuba diver back in 93 and I’d always put it as one of my bucket lists that I was going to go to the Maldives. So when my wife and I got married in 2008 I said to her that we were – you know I wanted to take to the Maldives and we could just dive for two weeks straight and check that list off. So anyway we did that and then at the end of the two weeks when we were coming home again she just said to me that you know I could live that kind of lifestyle in that kind of climate. I’d like to try living under a different culture in a different country. So by 2010 we headed off to Brunei on Borneo which was supposed to be for two years but ended up three and a half and from there we then went to Malaysia for seven and a half years. And then we went to Bahrain for two years and now we’re in Thailand for about the last eight months.

Joe Lenton: The cultures then that you’ve experienced must be quite different to the UK, having been both in the Middle East and in Asia. Could you give some sort of examples of things that you’ve had to get used to that people might be able to relate to?

Peter Rooney: Well, each one, again, is different. Brunei, Malaysia and Bahrain are predominantly Muslim countries. So, Brunei was quite tight. That was very – as an example there, we would have like a yacht club where expats would go. I mean, only expats would go there. You wouldn’t really get – the locals wouldn’t go there. And it’s all walled off and it’s just what it sounds like. It’s like an old British colonial type yacht club with a pool and that. And everyone would go there, have lunch and have a swim. So then they would have Ramadan come around and for that month it’s just like everything kind of shuts down.

Joe Lenton: Oh, right.

Peter Rooney: There’s no kind of you know well non-Muslims can do this, the Muslims must do this. It’s just like you’re here you do how we do. So like for a period where we would normally go and have lunch and that on a Friday, which was prayer day, they would shut down the pool. We couldn’t have the pool. We couldn’t even eat, even though we were outside of other people. So that, and then, you know, if somebody wore a crucifix, it would have to be covered. You couldn’t have it. So – and if you had any parcels come in, because obviously when I got into photography towards the tail end of Brunei, I was getting a lot of stuff off eBay. You have to go to the post office and you have to open it in front of officials. And if you get a book, you have to open the book in front of officials.

And just as another example is that I thought I’d do a steampunk shoot. So, I bought off Amazon I bought – it was like a model steampunk gun. Now imagine something from Bugs Bunny. So it had like it was all a solid resin piece. There was no moving parts on it. The trigger and everything was all carved out of them a solid mould. But it had like 10 big barrels with bullets pointing out the end and a pressure gauge on it. It’s a typical type of thing you’d see in Bugs Bunny and I got my wife to collect it. And when she went down and they opened it and it’s clearly a display piece. They said oh it’s a gun we have to hold it to the military. So, my wife then went down to the police station – we had to give it to the police sorry – so my wife then went down to the police station. They said oh no we’ve handed it over to the navy or the army or whatever and they need to check it out and I never did get it back! I never got it back. So there was really frustrating things like that.

Then we got into Malaysia which is extremely multicultural. I mean they’re tolerant of – I mean it was a different world there was parcels turning up  at my door, you know, that I didn’t have to go and collect every day. So but yeah I mean that was yeah I loved I absolutely loved Malaysia. I mean it was just, you know, the people, so many friends. The photography scene, it was just like – and then we went, it was because of the pandemic. And it was very, very tight in Malaysia at that time. And our girls had gone back to the UK. So we figured if anything happened, we couldn’t fly out and see them. Or if they came here, they would be caught. So we had this kind of, and they’d only just gone back. So they were kind of feeling their way. So we figured if we went to Bahrain, then we’d be not only six hours away from the UK, but also the girls would be a lot easier to reach them. They could come in and we could go out, because they didn’t have those restrictions in Bahrain.

But I mean, I just remember the day we landed and the trip to our house from the airport. I just wanted to go. I just thought this is not for me. I mean, it’s because my wife and I we like waterfalls. We like jungle hiking. We like all of that outdoor kind of thing. But in Bahrain, it was everything’s internal. So if you like to go for a drink down, you know, go to a bar or a restaurant or do something inside, then it’s fine. And it’s a tiny island. there was no photographic scene whatsoever. I didn’t even find a makeup artist in the two years I was there.

Joe Lenton: Really? Wow.

Peter Rooney: and yeah so we got to the end of that contract and we thought no it’s let’s go back to Asia.

Joe Lenton: that is very very very different then yeah. It’s yeah it’s so hard to imagine because I mean in the UK just the photography industry feels quite saturated and busy and every young lady wants to be a model and there’s so many makeup artists or people that you know put themselves out there as makeup artists that it’s actually really difficult to kind of narrow down who you want to work for. It’s hard to imagine being in a situation where there’s just nothing.

Peter Rooney: Yeah I mean Malaysia was brilliant. I mean it’s, you know, a huge photography scene there, especially in the wedding industry. And yeah I mean I had girls that modelled for me and makeup artists I worked with all the time. So, yeah, that was a really good time. There was lots going on there.

I haven’t quite found my feet here because we’ve only been here like eight months. So a lot of settling in and I’ve been building qualification panels and stuff at the moment. So I haven’t really settled in to find out the scene here.

Joe Lenton: Yeah, well, that all takes a little bit of time and exploring. How about then with your style of work that you do, then you will have been before quite a lot of different audiences, really. So you’ve submitted work for assessment in the UK, you will have entered tournaments all around the world, you’ll have had people see your work locally wherever you have lived. Have you found that people respond differently to it in different places?

Peter Rooney: Not really I think it’s because Asia is, I mean, if you take for argument’s sake the wedding industry in Asia. The actual wedding day itself which is a huge concern within the UK – that’s the business day. In Asia it’s not so much. It’s more a pre-wedding scene. So they’ll go off and they’ll have staged images and that’s where you’ll see these – when you see these images come into competition from Asia, these amazing beautiful wedding images that is their predominant business.

Joe Lenton: Right .

Peter Rooney: Because they – it’s much bigger for the pre-wedding than the actual wedding would just be like people you gather the pictures that people take, but you would hire a photographer. So it’s very creative. Everything is like pushing the boundaries, creative. So especially in Asia I found that my work was picked up a lot more than, say the UK. So, internationally I did a lot better in competition because I like do more – I like to push the boundaries rather than traditional type portraiture, which isn’t really a thing in Malaysia either.

And a lot of these Asian countries, they don’t have traditional portraiture. They might go into a studio where they’ve got a seat and they’ll all sit around the seat and that’s it. But yeah, I’d probably say Asia – America is quite popular. Yeah, I’d probably say Asia, the Asian countries, I think. And that’s probably where I got most of my ideas and concepts from, I think, because that’s where I was living when I started to fully go into photography.

Joe Lenton: Yeah, the wedding thing sounds almost as if it’s what would be viewed in the UK more like a fashion shoot or something for these, the kind of pre-wedding shoots where you have a lovely location and you take time over just the bride and groom together. But you don’t have all the herding of cats that goes on with the normal wedding day itself. That would almost be enough to persuade me to consider weddings if that’s all I had to do.

Peter Rooney: I mean, like you said, a lot of them will fly off. They’ll just say, oh, we’ll go and do a shoot by a waterfall in Cambodia or, you know, we’ll fly off to Bali and you know the bride and groom will kind of pay for the package to go off with this photographer and do location shoots. And the work is just phenomenal. I mean, it is just that’s what – I mean I didn’t go into that because I just thought it was the competition there I mean I don’t have that level of experience and skill that these guys do. But it never failed to blow my mind.

Joe Lenton: So with your creative studio work, how did you approach learning the lighting? Because you’ve refined your lighting over the years to quite a sophisticated, painterly sort of look to it all. Is that something that you had personal tuition in or did you watch tutorials? What was your approach to learning your lighting?

Peter Rooney: So everything I think I’ve done in life really has been kind of self-taught, you know, even down to web development. When I took that up in the mid-90s, there was no courses and no books or anything. So, I thought I want to become a web developer. So, I started to look at the source code in the back of browsers and learnt that way. Because I’m not very good – I get video, so many videos, but I don’t have the patience to watch them. So I’ll sit there, I’ll get 10, 15 minutes in and I’m like, “I just want to shoot something.” So I don’t have that kind of patience.

But yeah, I kind of cherry pick. I’ve cherry picked and I’ve seen what works. It’s like I’ve tried light meters, but I find that I just gauge everything by eye so much now that if I use a light meter, it’s too bright. And I know what the end result I’m looking for. So everything I do is kind of by eye and by trial and error. So I’ve looked – I’ve, you know, cherry picked from the best out there to get a basic idea and how things go and then I just end up kind of playing until I get what it is that I’m looking for.

Joe Lenton: So, is it something that you then for each shoot you’re then developing a lighting setup for that or have you got one or two kind of signature setups now that you just have that ready when someone comes in the studio?

Peter Rooney: Depending on what I’m doing – more often than not, like at the moment, I’m building a panel. So what I’m doing there is I’m kind of using a similar setup because obviously for the sake of the panel, it has to be cohesive lighting throughout the panel. But then if I get kind of playtime, like, I mean, I don’t use professional models. I mean, I like to work with either friends or friends’ kids. So I’ve been touting all our friends here and that for their kids to come along because I like the challenge of trying to pose and get a natural reaction out of somebody who isn’t predisposed to modelling or that kind of thing.

And I had one, but she didn’t want to do the style that I’m doing in the panel because I’ve chosen a particular style for my panel. But she didn’t want to do that style. So then I said oh well let’s try something else and then I thought I’ll try a bit of white background with some shadow. And so then I just start to play with lighting there. So it really depends on, whether I’m in – what I’m doing at the time as to where my lighting will go. But predominantly if it’s a portrait, the lighting will be quite a similar setup. I prefer to use one light, and so that’s what I tend to do.

Joe Lenton: Well, I guess as well with some of your more creative composite images, you’ve got to be quite careful with lighting because an image – it can stand or fall to a certain extent on lighting, but also focal length being right with the perspective because otherwise it just doesn’t look real, does it? So you know how difficult is it trying to get a lighting matched for like one of the little models that you sometimes buy like your little model animals or you know creatures that you’ve used. How difficult is it trying to get the lighting to look right when you put one of them in with somebody a full-size you know normal human being for example?

Peter Rooney: Yeah. Well what I tend to do in that case is I replicate the lighting with a smaller modifier. So I’ll always say okay I’ve got my subject here and I will use a large modifier, slightly in front of the subject. And then what I would do is I would go to like a mini box, a much smaller, maybe sometimes even a small flash with a smaller modifier, but I’ll put it in a similar location to what I had. So the subject blends. Because it is quite difficult in that, you know, a lot of the stuff I did, I don’t like to use stock. So if I needed mountains when I was doing the dinosaur stuff, if I need mountains, what I would do is I’d buy aquarium rocks and then I’d just shoot the aquarium rocks under the same lighting and then I’d rearrange them to look like mountains. So, yeah, I mean, it’s like a mini-me. I just have a bigger setup for the subject and then replicate that on a miniature scale for the model.

Joe Lenton: It’s an interesting one there for the landscape landscape because normally speaking when you’re shooting real landscapes you’re shooting much much wider than you would be for when you’re shooting your models and so on so trying to blend stuff that’s been shot with very different focal lengths is, well, it’s more than a headache!

Peter Rooney: Yeah!

Joe Lenton: So that’s quite an interesting sort of tip then really to yeah get these things to sort of blend together as finding a way of thinking around the problem and finding a different way of shooting those images.

Peter Rooney: Yeah, I mean that’s really it’s that was the best solution that I found that worked for me.

Joe Lenton: Yeah no it’s a good idea. I like the sound of that, yeah. So I presume with your retouching it’s been a similar sort of eclectic mix of bits and pieces you’ve picked up from around the place is it? Have you been watching sort of tutorials online to learn how to do the various sort of retouching techniques?

Peter Rooney: Yeah, I mean, it’s probably – YouTube’s my friend there. So what I tend to do is I’ll look for something that I’m trying to achieve. So it might be like, I want to change the colour of this top. So then I’ll just find tutorial videos, quickly go through that find out how to to do that if you know if I needed to, But again it’s – I’ll take certain techniques that somebody I might see somebody use in one video and then I’ll add it onto a technique that I see in another video and then I’ll blend the two together. And I had to do that on the panel that I’m currently working on because I was trying to go for a kind of fine art, almost old master style kind of look and feel. So it was a lot of playing around and colour grading and I try and do an edit the initial edit within a 20 minute window with portraits.

Joe Lenton: That’s pretty quick.

Peter Rooney: So I have a set system that I use and then I will go back and then I may refine that or change it. But, as you know, with a panel it’s difficult because once you’ve committed to that first image everything else’ll have to have the same treatment so that’s why I try and do it in a fairly quick window in case I have to go back and start again. But yeah these are just techniques and things that if you get it right in-camera, I mean that’s for me – is that I tether to a 27 inch iMac because my eyes aren’t what they used to be. And I can – if the image on the screen looks like it’s been edited if it looks kind of finished that’s what I aim for so that I know that I’ve got very little to do when I actually get into Photoshop.

So I’ll spend more time setting up the lighting and what I tend to do is I have like a mannequin head and this kind of thing. So I’ll put a mannequin head in a wig on the, you know, or whatever and then I’ll set the lighting up with that so that when the subject turns up or the client turns up, I just stand here and it’s ready to go. But, yeah, I mean, if I get as much done with the lighting as I can and then I’ve just got minor tweaks in Photoshop.

Joe Lenton: Yeah, that makes sense. Rather than a lot of the time people do it the other way around. They could chuck a light up there and then spend hours and hours in Photoshop trying to dodge and burn things and trying to bring it all together. And you think well you know you could have done it with the lighting in the first place potentially, yeah.

Peter Rooney: Yeah I think that was a lesson that I learned early on is that you know if you get the lighting – if you can perfect the lighting then your image will look almost like it just needs minimal editing. And then you’ve just got very little to do and then you don’t have to worry about that correcting.

Joe Lenton: Yeah yeah. Good tip I think there, yeah. So, if we think about your workflow when you create something like this. I mean, let’s start with what motivates you in the first place. Why do you want to do that kind of image? What is it that sort of makes you get out of bed in the morning to do that?

Peter Rooney: Depends on what kind of image I’m doing. I mean, I love portraiture, so I always try to just be a little bit different. So, I mean, if it was something that was more creative, like a composite, then generally that will come from something I’ve seen or a prop. I mean, for example, when we lived in Malaysia, I was walking around – we lived in a compound and I was wandering around one morning and I found like a skip. And in this skip, somebody had thrown away a family of mannequins, complete mannequins. It was a mother, a father, there was a son and a daughter. So I went home, got the car, loaded these things in the back and I put them in the back of the, under the carport. and they were sat under the carport for a week or so. And I’d go out for a morning walk every morning and I’d sort of think, what can I do with the mannequins? You know, what can I do? There must be a concept or an idea.

And then one day I came back and I noticed that my daughter – her Facebook profile picture was different. Her face structure was different and her features were different. And I said to her, “are you using an app to change your features?” And she said, “no, no, no, no, it’s just makeup.” I said, no…, you know. So then that got me curious. So what I did was I just started to look up, is there an app that can change features? This was back in about 2018, I think. And sure enough, there was this huge thing going around where everybody’s changing their faces using these apps.

So then it hit me for the mannequin. So I got one of my daughter’s friends and I came up with this concept that I would have her sat at the table putting a makeup brush and on the – sorry let me explain more – on the table I had the top half of the mannequin and in the mannequin I put a mobile phone. And then I had other applications like an iMac and an iPad, laptop and that kind of thing with Facebook open and I put all these little love hearts flying up all over the screen. And what I did was is I had her sit on the chair leaning towards the mannequin with a makeup brush. What I did was I then swapped the heads. So I put the mannequin head on her body and I put her head on the mannequin’s body.

And the idea was that for social media she was changing who she really was, but at the same time she was losing her own identity and becoming a mannequin because, you know. So it that was the kind of message that I put across in that image. But that’s where it would come from. So I would just see something and I would just think I can make an image out of that so that’s where the creativity might come from and portraits are obviously a lot easier. What I would do there is in this case I wanted to do a range of portraits that would be, as I said, a kind of like an old masters kind of look. So that the images would either be like Renaissance or Victorians in style.

Joe Lenton: OK.

Peter Rooney: The posing would be how they would have posed back in the day where they wouldn’t smile and they would have a stern look. So, and then what I would do is I’d find props and bits and pieces around the house and I’d build costumes and stuff out of that. So, and then from that, then I will sort of think of another project.

Joe Lenton: So sometimes it’s creating a narrative and other times it’s more sort of creating a scene that evokes a period or whatever then perhaps.

Peter Rooney: Yeah, yeah it’s just really trying different things. Just trying to come out with different concepts, different ideas and put them into another scenario. I mean like, you know, the thing that started off all my dinosaur collection was I saw a model, like a toy model of a rhino so I wanted to provoke the thought of rhinos becoming extinct through human intervention. And so then I found a shark and then I found an elephant. And then I used the same little girl in each one. Each one, she’s holding a cuddly toy of that animal. And you may have seen the images I’m speaking of.

Joe Lenton: Yes.

Peter Rooney: So that then became a series. And then I just thought, well, okay, I could do this because I saw this really cool dinosaur. And I thought, how can I collect these without my wife knowing I want to collect them? So I thought, well, what I’ll do is I’ll come up with an idea where I have to use one of these. So now I have this massive collection because they’re just, they’re really, really cool. And I’ve just recently taken – they just recently come out with a limited edition King Kong, which I’ve got now. So that will be a future – So yeah I mean on the dinosaur ones I’ve still got about 11 or 12 that I never actually – I’ve got all the poses. Did all the posing and everything. So I have all the images. I just haven’t built them yet. But that was brought on by the pandemic that’s that’s why I went that route.

Joe Lenton: Well it’s a handy thing with being a photographer in those sort of times is that you can find a way of putting some strange things on expenses! I’m sure there are plenty of food photographers that have tried to get chocolate bars and cakes and all sorts of things, you know, bottles of wine on expenses. Yeah, dinosaurs and gorillas? Well, give it a go, see what the accountant says.

Peter Rooney: It works for me.

Joe Lenton: Yeah, and why not? So sometimes then you’ve got an idea in in mind already when you do these and sometimes you’re sort of seeing a model that you think actually that might be useful for something. So like with the mannequins you didn’t know exactly what you wanted to do to begin with but you saw the potential and held on to them for a while until the idea developed.

Peter Rooney: Yeah precisely. I mean it’s exactly that. I just see something and I just sort of think well that would be interesting concept to use in a shoot. So, you know, how do I incorporate that. And I’ll just give it some thought. And usually something will pop in. I mean, I had another – this kind of went a bit mad. I had when we were in Malaysia, my wife gave a friend of ours a photoshoot with me for her birthday. But she was not into your traditional type. Not many expats are. But she’s not into the traditional type family shoot. And she said, I don’t want to sit there and pose and do all of that. So I said well leave it – I’ll get – I’ll think of some ideas. So I said well look can you get – and she said plus her husband Sean will never go in to a photograph. So I said OK leave it with me. 

And then I went back and I just said look so I’ve got an idea. I said, “how about, what if we do an image where it’s like a day in the life?” Because they were a crazy family it’s just like a hectic family. So I said we’d do a day in the life.

Joe Lenton: OK.

Peter Rooney: So what we’ll do – if you can get Sean to just sit in a chair and look at his phone and his son Finn to stand behind the chair I’ll take a shot of that. You to stand in front of the ironing board and I’ll take a shot of that. And then you’d the girls to be in a third shot and then I’ll stitch the whole thing together as one scene. So what it ended up with was the husband was sat in the chair looking at his phone in his work clothes like he’s just got home and relaxed. He’s reached out for a bottle of beer. But what’s happened is his son has swapped the bottle of beer from behind the chair for a bottle of chili sauce. So his dad’s got a bottle of chili sauce that he’s just about to swig from. The son’s got the bottle of Carlsberg, swigging that behind the chair.

The mum has seen what’s going on and looks scared. But she’s – but the thing is that she’s ironing and Kim doesn’t iron. It’s one thing that all her friends know her for. What she does not do is iron. So I said well let’s stick you behind an ironing board because that will raise a question of why are you ironing? And so I had like dirty washing in front of the ironing board. Then behind the ironing board, I had clean washing on a chair. The elder daughter had come in holding out her makeup as if to say, “my sister has been in my makeup and she’s, you know, wrecked it all.” And the sister is sat on the floor covered in war paint. So she’s done herself up like Indian war paint and she’s wiping it off on the mum’s clean washing.

So we’ve got this narrative story and then she – when I finished that I mean we had a big canvas printed. And she was just, “oh my god this is my family this is my life!” And then all of a sudden I had a queue of people out the door. I even had a CEO of a company come up and say “I want one of these for my management team.” So we got them. So it’s just like give me a story about each the character of each person and then we’ll build up this story. And then they had a huge canvas printed hung in the office and she had a mini canvas made for each of the team members.

Joe Lenton: It’s so much more interesting that than the usual let’s march everybody in front of a big white wall and get them to lie down with their chins on their, you know, on their knuckles or something like that. The usual cheesy family photos – it’s so much more interesting something like that and I should think the families must be so much happier with it because they can identify with it rather than it just being, you know, just a cheesy snap. You know, it’s actually really crafting around their story, someone showing a real interest in them.

Peter Rooney: Well, this is it. I mean, the key thing was to actually get something that was relevant to each person so that, you know, whatever they were doing in the image, it relates to them in real life. And yeah it was just that – especially with expats, they’re a funny breed. I think it’s because there is a kind of a nomadic lifestyle. So you might have a contract for two years here and two years there. So it’s very much like, well I don’t really want to ship loads of prints and stuff around with me. And so you don’t tend to get – you have to try and find something that’s different. And so as soon as this idea came out and then other people saw it, as I say, I literally had people queuing out the door wanting to have one of these done.

And of course it’s fun. They love doing it because they don’t feel self-conscious. They don’t sort of feel awkward and “how do I sit ?”or whatever. And it’s a lot of fun to do and everybody is relaxed. And then what often happens is you do that and then after that they’ll say, “oh, can we just do some family shots while we’re here together?” And by that time they’re in that zone where they’re you know they’re all relaxed and and they know what’s going on so you end up getting a family shoot out of that anyway. So yeah and it’s always a lot of fun.

Joe Lenton: Yeah well it sounds like it’s fun for you and for them really and it’s a good example of getting to understand the client and then providing something that really connects with that client like that I think. It’s when you just get all these generic things all the time that’s one of the things that I find disappointing in product photography is that so often people just want generic shots. They don’t necessarily want something creative. And you think if you’ve got something a little bit different you stand out and it’s that bit more fun for the brand and do you really want to just look like everybody else? You know?

Peter Rooney: Yeah well I think that’s why it came out in Asia, I think, because a lot of people think like that in Asia. It’s like what’s different, what’s creative, what’s different? So, yeah, I think you get that. People will go for that over a traditional style shoot.

Joe Lenton: Yeah, I think it’s become much more of a commodity in British culture in all aspects, really, for photography. It’s uh it seems whether it’s you know products or weddings or family images and so on, it’s so often it’s just well everybody wants it but they just want it cheap. They don’t really too worried beyond that and the the skill level that’s often required the entry level for being a professional is quite low in many respects because they’re they’re not pushing for that highly creative unusual sort of thing. So it’s quite an interesting difference then between the between the markets. Have you dipped into the UK market at all in recent years and felt that difference?

Peter Rooney: Not really. I mean I didn’t take up photography until late 2013. When we moved from Brunei I had a go at it in about 1980 but that was a bit of a disaster. So, when I decided to go this route, that’s when I thought, well, I need to take this seriously if I’m going to do this. So what I haven’t really been or done any work in the UK. I’ve only ever done this since I’ve been working overseas. Yeah, I can’t really say much about that one because I haven’t had that experience.

Joe Lenton: Well, I suppose the great thing there with some of what you’re doing is you can enter stuff which you’ve actually been commissioned to do, whereas all too often you’ll find that a lot of photographers, the more creative stuff, is not what they’ve been commissioned. They get commissioned to do the routine, the fairly dull, mundane stuff, and then they create something else for competitions because – Like for me, most of my everyday work is not exactly competition work. It’s not the sort of thing anybody would be interested in seeing. So you kind of have to do it separately. But the nice thing I suppose with yours is you’re bringing the two together a bit more. You’re perhaps being a little bit more able to be more consistent as an artist.

Peter Rooney: Yeah well I mean it was because you know I had the idea like as I said I had a whole range with the dinosaurs. And the mother of the child who was in there she just bought massive canvases of everything. So those that’s where too that I’ve got work that I can enter into competitions and at the same time I’ve got work a client has bought. So yeah I get the best of both worlds in that part.

Joe Lenton: So how do you then market yourself? Is it something where you go the digital route? Is it something where you go more of a traditional sort of personal relationship route? How do you market your work when you’re living with an expat community sort of not too long in one place, you know?

Peter Rooney: Yeah, I mean, it’s basically word of mouth.

Joe Lenton: Right.

Peter Rooney: I mean, we don’t have any way to advertise like you would in the UK. So, you know this is – it is pretty much word of mouth because you’ve got a small pocket. So, if you take like Malaysia, for example, you’ve got the Malaysians who have very traditional style shots. As I say, they’ll go to a little shop on the high street and they’ll get them done in the back room, that kind of thing. There’s no embellishment. There’s no interest in anything creative. And then you have the predominant Chinese market. There’s a big Chinese market and that’s where all the wedding photography will come in. And wedding photography is very big in Asia – huge. But portraiture isn’t. But then if with the Chinese market a lot of the time because there’s cultural differences they will want a Chinese photographer to do the wedding or whatever as opposed to a western photographer.

So, that kind of just leaves the expat market. And what you tend to do is like what I’m doing here and what I did in Malaysia is I do creative shoots with people and their teenage kids and this kind of thing. And I do the creative work and then what will happen is off the back of that they will show that to other people and then other people will come for, “oh you know I could do with a family shot being done” or “I, you know, I’d love my family to do this or that.” So it’s very much word of mouth. It is difficult, especially when you keep moving because I just about got where I wanted to be in Malaysia and then we’re off to Bahrain when nothing happened. And now we’re back in Thailand so I’m trying to build again.

But you know I’m fortunate in the position that I’m in that my wife as I say is a principal. So we could survive off of her work and my stuff comes in as pocket money. So I don’t have that pressure. But we knew that when we decided to stay in Malaysia, when we decided to move to Malaysia because I would have to give up the job I was doing at the time. So we knew what was coming and yeah it’s – So I’m not under that pressure but it’s just building a community of expats who then, you know, your work gets passed on and on and on and then you build it from there

Joe Lenton: Yeah because establishing a brand, establishing a business that people know you exist and you’re the person to go to always takes time so when you’re moving that regularly, that’s really against you, isn’t it? Very much so.

Peter Rooney: Yeah, it’s not – and as I say, I mean, it’s,  that’s why I focus a lot on creative work or competition work or something, you know, and then I use that to entice people in.

Joe Lenton: Yeah, it sounds like that your kind of method is much more about, OK, you’re not necessarily making a loss, but you’re just initially just creating like portfolio work, competition work that shows what you can do and getting that into the community. So rather than worrying about building social followings, rather than building a website with all the funnels to bring people through and everything, it’s much more a case of, “look, this is what I can do. Do you like it ?” And that seems to be working for you.

Peter Rooney: Yeah yeah just having to start again!

Joe Lenton: Yeah so would you say that you’ve got a very sort of determined mindset then? Because some people might find that continual having to rebuild the business just exhausting. Do you feel you’re very competitive or very determined?

Peter Rooney: I’m only really competitive I would say with myself. I’m not a competitive person by nature when it comes to competition or anything like that. I’m competitive with myself. So, yeah, what I try to do is I just try to create and as as long as I can create, then I take it in my stride. So I don’t really get frustrated by it at all. Its just one of those things that you have to go – so yeah I mean I do just reset almost and say okay time to start again time to rebuild. So, but I don’t try to let it frustrate me or affect the work that I do. And I think I’m quite lucky because I don’t have that pressure that a lot of people would have in that, you know, I need to make an income from this. So I have that time that I can – to build again. And, you know, in a way, it’s quite fun. I quite enjoy it. It’s nice to, you know, meet different people, new people, and, you know, come out with concepts and ideas and, you know, work with different styles.

Joe Lenton: Yeah and have a new audience appreciating your work and yeah that’s all good, I should think yeah. Do you feel you’ve had to reinvent yourself much throughout your photography career already as you’re moving forward? So you’re saying you’re competitive with yourself – do you have, do you see some targets for yourself that you want to get to and then sort of evolve to reach those targets ?Or is it is it more natural a natural process?

Peter Rooney: It’s more of a natural process. I don’t set myself a goal. I kind of I’ll make things up as I go along. I’ll think well what do I want to do next? What would I like to try next? I mean when we were in Malaysia and we had the pandemic hit you couldn’t move. You couldn’t travel more than 10 kilometres from your home. You could only have one person in the car. They had roadblocks everywhere where you’d have to take your passport. So you literally – I couldn’t get people to me I couldn’t get to people. So I thought well how do I continue to do, to create when I’ve got no subjects and I’ve got no makeup artists? And that’s when the idea of using the dinosaur range came up and those creative shots I did then because of my neighbour’s daughter. So I could get my neighbour’s daughter to come in and then I you know – so I took a trip into composites, which I think started with the Toymaker. I think that was my first trip into composites.

And then what happened was is I then just followed that through with the whole range because I couldn’t do anything else. But I was desperate to get back to portraiture because there’s less work involved in that. So, yeah, I mean, I just concentrate on what I’m doing at the moment, which is coming to the tail end of a panel for several qualifications. And then after that, I’ll probably just sort of say, well, what would I like to try now? Something, another theme – I just love to do themes. I love to do storytelling.

Joe Lenton: So sets of images on a theme.

Peter Rooney: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I went through the creative where I did like insanely different types of creative process. And then I went through the composites and now I’m back into more traditional portraits. But I still want them to kind of tell a story.

So, you know, I don’t know where it will go from there. Once I’ve got this done and dusted, I’ll then just think, OK, well, what’s my next project? And then meantime what happened is I carry on using these people and then eventually they’ll come back and say to me okay can we do a family shoot or can we do you know some client work and then then it just spreads word of mouth. Because once it gets back to – because predominantly they’re all schools – so once it gets into a school you get all the parents at the school. So it’s a good target audience.

Joe Lenton: Yeah so it’s experimenting, seeing what’s going to connect with people’s imagination. I mean I’ve seen your recent profile image that you just changed. That is – you can very much read a story out of that. You know, the character that you’ve made yourself in there with the background behind it. Tell us a little bit about that image.

Peter Rooney: That was, well, because what I was trying to do is – I have – for me, creating a panel is the worst, really, because I go off my own work very, very quickly. So I’ll shoot image number one and I’m like, okay, yeah, that’s what I’m after. I’ve nailed that. By the time I get to image number three, I’m like, I don’t like image number one. I’ve got to change image number one. So then I do another reshoot. So I just get in this endless circle of trying to find images to replace images I’ve already shot. So hence it’s taken me a long time.

And I got a neighbour of mine to come over and I did crazy tattoos and blackened his face up with coal and put him in some armour and set him up as like a medieval warrior. And then I said to him, I said, actually, what I want to do as well is I want to do like a Mary Poppins kind of Victorian chimney sweep. So he said, yeah, I’m a bit busy at the moment because I’ve got all work and all this sort of thing, but, yeah, we’ll do that. And then I just sort of felt, oh, why can’t I just do myself as that? So then I thought, okay, I’ll just do a session with myself as a Victorian chimney sweep.

Joe Lenton: And why not? Absolutely.

Peter Rooney: So why not? Absolutely.

Joe Lenton: That’s not something everybody’s got.

Peter Rooney: No. So that’s where that kind of comes from. But I just love trying to put together different pieces of stuff from around the house and generate a costume from it. Or rather than go out and buy – I mean, that jacket that I was wearing there was initially, I’d got it for a Peaky Blinders kind of shoot. Like an overcoat, but it was kind of too small and I never used it. So I took it outside, set fire to a load of paper and I just completely doused this thing in soot from the paper. I got a Stanley knife.

Joe Lenton: As you do.

Peter Rooney: And I ripped this thing up with a Stanley knife just to give it that really aged look that it had been up a few chimneys. And then my wife saw it and she said, have you cut that up? Because I’m notorious for that. I think the worst one I ever did was I was doing – I was in Malaysia and I was doing a kind of creative portrait and I needed a red veil to set off this… So I found this piece of material and I thought, oh, that’ll do. So I just cut the section off of this material and I used that. And when I’d finished an edit, I sent it to my wife. I said, this is my latest work. And she said, is that my new curtains? I’d cut a brand new pair of net curtains that I just cut in half. So, yeah, I’m a bit notorious for put everything away because it could end up getting cut up and used in a shoot. So, yeah, that took a lot of time to get forgiveness for that one.

Joe Lenton: Yeah, I had – the look on my wife’s face when she came home one day and I’d been photographing splashes. So throwing red paint around in my studio. There was this sort of inflatable swimming pool thing in the middle of the studio floor with red paint like everywhere and sheets of plastic covering up all the lights to stop it all getting on there and all that. Her face – oh goodness me!

Peter Rooney: Oh yeah.

Joe Lenton: I think that’s the closest I got to sleeping in the shed doing that. That was er…..

Peter Rooney: Well I learned early on that actually getting my wife to be my assistant – and she’s absolutely brilliant as an assistant now – helps because I get away with a lot more now.

Joe Lenton: Yeah she’s involved then.

Peter Rooney: Yeah yeah. So it’s like I then can’t make a mistake of doing something or cutting something up that I shouldn’t be and er yeah.

Joe Lenton: So you say, no, you’ll have to stop me if you want to keep it! You’ll have to stop me. It’s down to you. Yeah, it sounds to me really with your creativity, there’s kind of two sides to it. On the one hand, the sort of problem solving. So you come across an obstacle and think, how can I get round this? So I can’t shoot people. Well, let’s shoot dinosaurs and that kind of side. And then the other side of it, which just seems to me, play and having fun, really.

Peter Rooney: I think that’s the key thing to it. I mean, especially from a client’s perspective, because if you get somebody that comes in who’s self-conscious – a lot of people are self-conscious. They kind of, “how am I going to look? I feel awkward” or whatever. And my wife’s a lot of fun she’s a great people person and she’ll just dance around do crazy things and, you know, say oh try this and try that and that puts people at rest because she’s being silly so they kind of they don’t feel so self-conscious. And then when you do something creative, as I say, they’re just more switched on to that. So it’s all about having fun at the end of the day. You know, you want somebody to go away and just say, you know, that was great. If you ever need me to come back and do another one, you know, give me a shout. And that’s kind of what I look for at the end of it.

And, you know, I mean, especially with, I mean, I had when I was in, when we were in Malaysia, I wanted to do like, I’d seen American horror episode, you know, the freak show, American horror? And there was like a two-headed woman as one of the characters. And I thought I really wanted to do something like that. But what I wanted to do was like a Jekyll and Hyde. So I used one of my friend’s daughters for it. She was about, I don’t know, 11, 12, something like that, I suppose. Very shy, quite reserved and so I got my makeup artist in who’s brilliant and she painted like stitches on the neck on one half of the neck and then blackened the eye and all this and then we did the other makeup where she was very pretty. So we had this kind of Jekyll and Hyde thing going on with this double head. But what happened was is that I did a couple of shoots on that and then the mum come back and said she’s changed so much when she goes back to school, she’s so much more confident. So you know you have elements of things like that that you can bring out.

And I’ve got another mother here and her daughters and it’s just like they didn’t want to do it the first time. They were really apprehensive. And then she’ll message me, “so the girls are asking when they can come back.” And they’ve been back like four times towards the panel. But I like to do that as well because I like to especially on the kids side of things to to get them to feel confident and photography is a great way of doing that if it makes them feel good about themselves. So yeah I’ve had some positive outcomes on things like that as well.

Joe Lenton: Well that’s really great to be able to have that sort of income [(impact)] on a young life you know to help them to gain confidence and you know to feel that you can make a contribution like that as well as creating art together yeah that must be really encouraging for you.

Peter Rooney: Yeah this is it. But it’s the creative element of it, it’s the creative element of, I mean, I combine the two when I first started to look into photography and we got to Malaysia and I was like well I need to join an organization and I need to get a qualification. I you know I didn’t know what to do. So it was very much – I’ve viewed it – I was trying to view how would I do competition to client work. So the way that I actually view it is I think of competitions as – if people ask me I’ll say that I’ve seen competitions as a fashion show. Imagine that as a fashion show.

So what you would have is that the designer would have a range of clothes that they sell in H&M or Topshop or whatever, which are just your normal, average, everyday style of clothing. And then you’ll have the fashion show where the same designer will create something that only Lady Gaga would wear in public, you know.

Joe Lenton: Yeah.

Peter Rooney: You might have bin bags hanging off the back or bats stuck on the head or, you know, people hanging off of each other. Completely things that you just wouldn’t not wear but the way that it is is that it gives that designer the opportunity to push the boundaries boundaries of their creativity. So that what they would do is they would use that to just say, okay, this isn’t something I’m going to sell. So that would be, that’s just to show the judges, etc., my out of the box. You’re thinking out of the box, whereas this is my high street. So I see fashion shows as competition work, and I see the high street stores as your client work.

But where I’m quite lucky is that my designer and my fashion show is my client work because they’re more interested in that than they are the traditional. So I’m kind of lucky that I get a lot of this playtime. And, you know, I just think people, especially in this part of the world, are just more open to that than a traditional family shoot. So I’ve had it uh yeah I’m quite lucky in that respect. Lots of play time!

Joe Lenton: So there could soon be a huge influx of British photographers in your area all coming over to explore their creativity after having listened to this! Yeah it’s really great to get a little bit of a glimpse behind some of the images. I’ve seen some of your images over the years but it’s really interesting to hear a little bit of what’s behind them. Now for those who aren’t familiar with your work where’s the best place if they want to get a taste of what you do? Where’s the best place for them to go to see some of your work?

Peter Rooney: Well, I have a website which has some of my work on there, which is peterrooneyphotography.com and also on Instagram, which is @peterrooneyart. You’ll find me on there. There’s some of the newest stuff I haven’t put up there yet because it’s obviously panel work and stuff like that. But, yeah, between those two is where I tend to put most of my work.

Joe Lenton: Great. Yeah, it’s going to be interesting to see how the panel work all turns out. It’s nerve-wracking stuff. Having been through that kind of thing myself – it’s challenging. It’s an opportunity to develop, do something different.

Peter Rooney: Well, this is it. I mean, it’s exactly that. It’s not about winning. It’s not about first place. It’s not about goals. It’s about whatever it takes for you to create and to put your work out there. And yeah because I’ve got the FEP coming up in next month and then hopefully the SWPP after that and then a few more further down later in the year. So, yes…

Joe Lenton: A nerve-wracking few months ahead of you then by sound of it.
Peter Rooney: the absolutely, yeah yeah it’s – the odds are if I throw it in the pot a lot of times hopefully one of them will come out.

Joe Lenton: Yeah I like that – play the odds, absolutely. It’s been really good being able to talk to you Peter. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Really appreciate you sparing the time for it.

Peter Rooney: That’s great, Joe. Thanks so much for inviting me on it’s been an absolute pleasure, thank you.

Joe Lenton: No worries and thank you everybody for listening to the Focused Professional podcast

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