National Chef of the Year
In our 11th year of capturing the legendary annual Craft Guild of Chefs National Chef of the Year event in October.
This year the semi-finals returned to Sheffield and London for both NCOTY and YNCOTY
Mentor Day was spent at Waitrose Headquarters on the 8th of September, taking individual portraits of all the finalists of NCOTY and YNCOTY, group portraits and the Judges’ portraits.
The NCOTY & YNCOTY finals took place at the Le Cordon Bleu London, Bloomsbury on the 6th of October. Here we worked with our expert crew of four, Adrian, Ben, David and Gwendolen. Two separate kitchens were used for the finalists who competed simultaneously. We captured all the kitchen action of food preparation, cooking and interaction with the judges. A studio set-up where all the finalists’ dishes were photographed – starters, mains and desserts were photographed from above and at a 45° angle to provide options for the sponsors.
Images were edited on the day and turned around quickly as there was a deadline due to the winners being announced that same evening, and images were going to be needed by Digital Blonde for a press release the following day.
The winners were announced at The Orangery, New Oxford Street, at the Celebration event on the evening of the 6th.
NCOTY winner: Ruth Hansom Hansom Restaurant, Yorkshire.
YNCOTY winner: Toby Whitehead, Coworth Park
All images were uploaded to galleries by the following morning to be shared on the Craft Guild of Chefs’ social media platforms.
Crew: Adrian Franklin, Ben Meadows, David Cotsworth & Gwendolen Franklin
View previous years’ galleries
