Dr. Andrew Peacock is an award-winning adventure and travel photographer who late last year (Christmas eve) found himself stranded in Antarctica during an expedition. During the ordeal, Dr. Peacock found himself in a fortunate position to document the events. What came from the experience was worldwide media attention as our friends from PetaPixel found out in an interview.
Since returning to dry land, with the help of Ben Maddison, Peacock has continued his photographic journey to include photographs of the unplanned event in a new Children’s book, Stay and the Snow Dragon.
I was fortunate enough to catch up with Dr. Peacock in Melbourne, Australia after he contacted me via a publication mentioning my recent ImageBrief win. After exchanging life stories and a shared passion for photography over a local coffee, I was introduced to the story of Stay and the Snow Dragon. The story was to be told from the perspective of a plastic seeing-eye dog named Stay, who had plenty of significance to the Australian Antarctic Expedition teams.
Stay is no stranger to the publishing world as award-winning author Jesse Blackadder wrote the first children’s book about her spontaneous dognapping carried out by Antarctic expeditioners aboard the Aurora Australis in 1991. Since then Stay has gone through some major travels and was on the onward journey back to Australia when the Russian ship she was aboard became stuck in thick pack ice.
Dr. Peacock used a series of Photoshop techniques to transform his photographs into HDR like illustrations. The final image results really do complement the whole story, which is best described by the blurb;
“Based on the true story of the contemporary Australasian Antarctic Expedition this delightful book is for children aged 5 to 9 years but all readers with a love of adventure and a desire to learn about Antarctica will enjoy it.
In late 2013 the ice strengthened ship Akademik Shokalskiy became stuck in thick pack ice at the edge of East Antarctica. The fate of the ship’s crew and the scientists and tourists aboard became the focus of a world-wide media frenzy over the New Year.
Little known is that there was a very special passenger aboard the ship and, along with colorful photo illustrations, in this book ‘Stay’ the dog, tells us his unique story of the stranding and subsequent dramatic rescue.
While helping his friends to study the icy world around them, through the eyes of ‘Stay’ we learn about the beautiful and climactically important frozen continent at the bottom of the world and meet the cheeky penguins and other animals who live there.”
To purchase your copy of Stay and the Snow Dragon click here.
Dr. Andrew Peacock’s photographic work can be found on his website and Facebook.
If you feel like connecting with Stay, the adventurous seeing-eye dog be sure to add her as a friend on Facebook here.
Alternatively you can donate to Stay’s original owner, the Royal Guide Dogs Tasmania to help them train puppies into guide dog heros.
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