National Chef of the Year 2023
National Chef of the Year
In our 7th year of capturing the legendary annual Craft Guild of Chefs National Chef of the Year event which celebrated its 50th anniversary in October. Mentor day was spent at Ascot Racecourse in September taking individual portraits of all the finalists of NCOTY and YNCOTY, group portraits and the Judges portraits.
Fortunately, the weather remained fine and we were able to take shots outside which we did on the stands with the turf visible.
The NCOTY & YNCOTY finals took place at the University of West London on the 31st of October. Here we worked with our expert crew of two, Adrian and Ben. Two separate kitchens were used for the finalists who competed at staggered times. Ben captured all the kitchen action of food preparation, cooking and interaction with the judges. Adrian had a studio set-up where he photographed all the finalist’s dishes; starters, mains and desserts.
Images were turned around quickly as there was a deadline due to the winners being announced the same evening and images were going to be needed by Digital Blonde for a press release the following day.
The winners were announced at a celebratory 50th-anniversary dinner at The Berkeley, Knightsbridge. 250 plus guests were gathered including previous winners over the years, including Gordon Ramsay who presented prizes. James Gifford-Mead, one of our event photographers captured this glittering evening hosted by the Craft Guild of Chefs with Will Torrent on stage.
After the winners were announced Adrian filmed interviews with NCOTY winner Ben Murphy from Launceston Place and YNCOTY winner Mae Dionio from Belmont Le Manoir. In addition, we captured Gordon Ramsay; all were interviewed by Karen Fewell from Digital Blonde. All images were uploaded to galleries by the following morning. The interviews were also edited and delivered the following day to be seeded on the Craft Guild of Chefs’ social media platforms.
View previous years’ galleries
