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This past weekend past saw the annual running of the annual 2016 Australian Professional Photography Awards (affectionately known to all those who enter as APPA). For those of you who may be unfamiliar with APPA you can read a previous blog post with my thoughts on the awards HERE.

This year was different for me as I was neither attending or judging the awards as I am currently in Iceland finishing up the second of two back-to-back workshops in the Highlands (I am headed back to Australia as soon as I finish this post – currently at the Iceland Air Saga Lounge). Although the APPA awards are live streamed across the internet the award timing happened to coincide with a period of time when I was in a very remote part of the Highlands without internet access and as such I subsequently learned of my scores after the event.

This was the sixth year I have entered the APPA awards. This year I again chose to enter the Science, Wildlife and Wild Places category (formally known as the Science, Environment and Nature Category), not only because I won this overall category in 2014, but also because this category has very rigid rules on image manipulation that are consistent with my own ethics for minimalist post production techniques. I have actually developed a severe allergy to the Landscape category at APPA for its ‘anything goes’ post production mantra that turns the entire category into a photoshop farce. More to come on this in a future post…

This year I chose to enter three images from the Arctic that I felt conveyed strong emotional feelings of wildlife in the landscape in dramatic conditions and one from South Georgia Island. I was thrilled to receive a Gold Award, a Silver with Distinction award and a Silver award for my first three entries. The fourth scored a 79 falling just short of Silver. This overall total placed me in the finals for the overall category win. It also provided sufficient points for my first Gold Bar toward my Grand Masters.

This year I also chose to enter my new book ‘Melrakki‘ into the Professional Book Award and was very pleased to receive a highly coveted Silver with Distinction award. Thank you very much to all those who contacted me after the judging with such overwhelmingly positive feedback on the book. Those of you who have pre-ordered the book (thank you) should start receiving them later this month.