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[ 17 ]Who’s Who in the KelbyOne Community: Dr. Andrew Peacock
Dr. Andrew Peacock was our most recent winner of The Gallery at KelbyOne, which took place on September 27,- One of his amazing images from the Gallery is also on the cover of this issue. Dr. Peacock first began to
explore the world through a camera lens while working as a doctor on voluntary assignments in the mountains
of Nepal and India. He loves to create images that tell stories of human exploration in areas of natural beauty
and wonder. You can learn more about Dr. Peacock at FootlooseFotography.com.
regions, Alaska, and Baja on their expedition ships, which
obviously gives me incredible opportunities for nature and
wildlife photography. I contribute stock photography, so
I’m also thinking about that side of things when I make
decisions about what to shoot.You’ve earned many accreditations and awards.
What advice would you give to others looking to
achieve recognition for their photography?
Rewards in photography are unique to each person. My
reward primarily comes from seeing my images in publi-
cations, online, or on walls, but with the expectation of
getting paid appropriately. So my first piece of advice is to
never give images away for free. I do enter a few specific
competitions, usually ones with a print exhibition, and it’s
not just a money-making online exercise for the organiz-
ers. I’d encourage anyone to enter competitions that suit
the genre of work they shoot; just the process of editing
your best work and making decisions about what to enter
will help you become a better editor of your work and help
you separate personal emotion from the objective reality
of whether others will consider a photo award-worthy.What camera gear do you use today?
I shoot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV and 7D Mark II,
teamed with a number of L series lenses. I’m not a gear
freak by any means. The most important feature for me is
durability because I need gear that can perform in extreme
outdoor conditions. Batteries also need to last a while.How has being a KelbyOne member helped you?
I’ve been aware of Scott Kelby’s instructional work for a
long time. I wrote an article about one of my images for
one of KelbyOne’s affiliate magazines (LayersMagazine
.com), and I requested a membership to KelbyOne. The
most challenging area for me as a photographer is spend-
ing time in front of a computer when I’d rather be out
photographing or enjoying other aspects of life. So any
tips that speed my workflow are useful, and I appreciate
videos that professionals such as Scott have taken the time
to produce. I do just fine in terms of image processing, but
I struggle to maintain a structured editing workflow that
helps me keep track of my better images, so any instruc-
tional resources on that topic are very useful. nCongratulations on winning The Gallery at KelbyOne.
When did you decide to enter, and how did you select
the images to be displayed?
Thanks very much. I honestly can’t remember when
I entered. It was a while ago and a spur-of-the-moment
decision without any expectation of being selected. I find
editing my work down to the best images a difficult task,
not because there are so many great images but because it
takes an objective viewpoint (not a subjective one) to make
those selection decisions. Luckily, my website (hosted by
Zenfolio) is a good representation of the work I shoot, and
so I avoided the task of deciding what to exhibit at The
Gallery because the team at KelbyOne were able to use my
website to make a selection of their favorites for printing.Were you interested in photography before your
volunteer trips to Nepal and India? What did you
learn from those experiences?
I was definitely interested in recording the world around
me with a camera before my Himalayan trips. I remem-
ber being in Europe as a 17-year-old with a Canon T
SLR and being excited about getting exposures right in
difficult lighting using spot metering. I also bought a
Tokina telephoto zoom lens on that trip. I went to the
Himalayas to volunteer as a medical doctor and I took
slide film with me. I captured just enough decent images
for Lonely Planet Images (subsequently sold to Getty) to
take me on as a contributor. I learned from that trip just
how poor I was at storytelling with a camera and how
important it was to expose correctly in the high-contrast
light of the high mountain environment, especially with
unforgiving transparency film. It’s a lot easier now to get
it right in-camera in the digital age.Do you set specific goals for the types of images
that you want to capture before heading to the
great outdoors?
That’s a good question. I consider myself an opportunist
and am pretty happy to work without a specific agenda or
any preconceived ideas. Having said that, I enjoy the chal-
lenge of photographing to a brief, so that’s been fun on
the occasions when I’ve been sent on assignment. Much
of the photography work I do now is as a photography
instructor for Lindblad Expeditions. I travel to the polar