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After a few days of logistical long-haul travel, it is now time to depart for Antarctica, set sail down the Beagle Channel, out into the notorious Drake Passage, and make our way to the miracle of Antarctica. This will be my last post until I return on the 21st of December. If you are trying to contact me during this time, please be patient, and I will get back to you as soon as I return. We are off to play with the penguins!

The World Photographic Cup (the world’s Olympics of Photography) has just announced its country selections for 2024, and I am very proud to have been included once again in Team Australia. This will be my seventh time representing Australia at the WPC and I am deeply honoured to have been selected again to represent my country in these prestigious awards. To date, I have garnered a Bronze and two Silver medals at the WPC. In 2015, I took out the Bronze medal in the reportage category with a photograph of penguins on the sea ice in Antarctica. Then, in 2021 and 2022, I took out Silver medals in the Nature category for my photographs of the Emperor Penguin family and the Snowy Owl ‘Phantom of the Opera’. For 2024, my photograph of the Pallas cat in reeds will represent Australia. The full Team Australia list below includes the relevant categories.

Commercial: Keren Dobia, Netra Chetty, Sarah Louise Jackson

Sport: Andy Cheung, Bradley Kanaris, Jay Town

Reportage: Kelly Champion, Tebani Slade, Robert Lewy

Nature Wildlife: David Stowe, Joshua Holko, Peter Eastway

Nature Landscape: John Ansell, Paul Hoelen, Mieke Boynton

Illustrative/Digital Art: Douglas Porter, Rebecca Croft, Kris Anderson

Wedding Open: Frank Cecconi, Mauro Cantelmi, Ky Luu

Wedding Documentary: Gaelle Le Berre, Kelly Tunney

Portrait Natural: Janis House, Keren Dobia, Trevor Foon

Portrait Illustrative: Matthew Gianoulis, Nancy Flammea, Forough Yavari

The best of Nation and finalist images in the WPC will be announced live on the 30th of January, 2024. The overall winners will be announced shortly afterwards. Best of Luck to all our Aussie Team Members!

The time has come, the Walrus (err.. Penguin) said, to depart for the white contingent of Antarctica. In just a few minutes, I am piling into the car with my luggage and camera gear and making my way to the airport for flights to South America and the subsequent journey down to Antarctica. This will be my last blog post until I return at the conclusion of the expedition on the 21st of December (post-Antarctic, I will have a few days on Easter Island to scout a potential workshop location). I am excited to be travelling back to Antarctica and guiding a group of passionate photographers to this miraculous continent on this dedicated charter. The eve of an expedition is always an incredibly exciting time and I am both keen and eager to get underway. See you in South America and Antarctica!

As predicted, Apple’s latest Sonoma 14.1.2 (update December 1st 2023) once again breaks the Canon Pro1000 Printer driver by overwriting the print system, which causes a double profiling error. Apple has continuously messed with the printing system on every significant OS update in recent years and has continually broken the Canon Pro1000 printer driver in each update. Apple’s need to continually mess with colour management and their need to try and control ‘everything’ has proven highly frustrating for those of us who print with Canon Pro1000 printers and who care about accurate colour. Each update necessitates a deletion of the corrupt Canon driver, followed by a hard reset of the entire printing system and re-installation of the Canon Pro1000 printer driver. There are many things I love about Apple products, but Apple! Please leave the printing system alone! We do not want your stupid Air Print un colour-managed system! Leave our third-party drivers alone!

Perhaps the worst part of Apple’s need to control the print system and 3rd party drivers (such as those for the Canon printers) is that many people will not even be aware of the issue and may not recognise the problem or know what caused it, or how to rectify it. Double profiling errors can be some of the hardest to diagnose, and Apple’s need to control the entire print system (including third-party drivers) is causing many unnecessary headaches. My advice for those of you working with Apple computers and Canon Pro1000 printers is NOT to install any subsequent updates to your OS once you have your printing system functioning in a stable and reliable manner. Lock your system down and ignore all but critical security updates. Or, be prepared to continually reset your printing system with each Apple update, reinstall your printer driver and start from scratch.