Sponsored by The Stony Stratford Business Association, the ten day event, called Feastival, will feature a full programme of events, all connected with food and drink, ranging from an open day at a commercial micro-brewery to a children’s workshop to decorate cupcakes.
The first day of the event will see the farmers’ market, which is held every month, exhibiting a range of local produce in the Market Square.

One of the town’s local pubs will be hosting a real ale evening and a local brasserie will be holding a quiz night, which includes mystery tastings of different food, while Stony Wine Emporium is to hold a wine tasting evening, focusing on the variety of wines from South Africa.

The Bull Hotel is offering a genteel afternoon tea, while the Cock Hotel will be holding a pie night, where diners will have a menu featuring six different traditional pies.

The Kardomon Lounge will be holding a chilli evening with the proceeds going to charity, while other attractions include an exhibition by local food photographers, a stall selling homemade jams and chutney and a bookstall with a choice of books on growing and cooking food.

Robert Golden, an internationally renowned filmmaker and photographer, has put together a collection of photographs showing the lives of working people throughout the last century, focusing particularly on the old ways of farming and food production. Much of the food photography highlights the advances in technology, changing the production of food from a family business into a streamlined commercial enterprise.

Being held between 11th August and 24th August, the exhibition is called the Spirit of Bridport and the aim is to preserve the history of some of the traditional crafts of the area. The picturesque town of Bridport in is an old fishing port and famous for ropemaking over many centuries and was voted one of the top ten places to live in the UK in 2006.

The Spirit of Bridport group is hoping that the exhibition and workshops, which will be running throughout the festival, will encourage members of the community to become more involved in local matters and will leave its own memory of the Jubilee and Olympic celebrations.

The organiser, Robert Golden, is hoping that many of the visitors will be inspired by the food photography on display and may feel tempted to experiment in the workshops, which will be run by experienced photographers from different areas of the industry, including food photographers.

Large chain hotels and restaurants tend to rely on centralised images for advertising purposes while small family-owned enterprises rely on their individuality to generate and retain custom and are beginning to realise the success that enticing food photography can bring to their businesses.

The diversity of India could not be more easily demonstrated than by the variety of food available, from street stalls selling tikkis, patties made from spices and potatoes, accompanied by chutneys made with tamarind, red onions and tomatoes, to the most exclusive restaurants which serve exquisite food from around the world.

A professional photographer for almost 20 years, Nirat Singh from Kalyani Naga has recently moved into food photography, saying:

“We have been getting a lot of requests, especially from restaurants that are renovating. The assignments mostly revolve around menu displays.”

Aspiring professional food photographers are hoping to make their names by offering tailor-made services to the many small restaurants and street vendors, including posters, menus and flyers. In this way, photography students are able to build a portfolio of the most innovative and evocative photographs which specifically reflect the particular food and specialities of that restaurant.

Runner up prizes include book vouchers and professional kitchen knives, while the top prize is a demonstration on presenting dishes in the most effective way from celebrated food photographer Gareth Morgan. Heston Blumenthal will also be hosting a night’s gourmet dining at The Fat Duck, his restaurant in Bray, which has a string of prestigious awards to its name.

Judging the entries will be Mark McCarthy, business development chef at Unilever and Ciarán Scully who is the chef lecturer at Cork Institute of Technology, where the final will take place on 22nd February 2012.

Guest judge Martin Shanahan completes the line-up of those making the final decision, in his dual capacity of professional chef proprietor of Fishy Fishy in Kinsale, Co. Cork and television presenter of Martin’s Mad About Fish.

With the theme of Irish Fusion, students must make a starter and a main dish using regional Irish cuisine, with the criteria that at least two ingredients must be Knorr products and the starter must be seafood influenced, in deference to this year’s guest judge.

Launched 22 years ago, the award scheme gives food photographers the opportunity to exhibit their talent whilst raising awareness and showcasing local Scottish produce, particularly that from the Aberdeenshire area.

Split into two overall sections – companies with fewer than 25 employees and those with over 25 employees – there are several new categories in this year’s competition. Local accountants and business advisers Johnston Carmichael are sponsoring the new category of Grampian Food and Drink Entrepreneur of the Year, which they hope will boost their reputation in advising entrepreneurs and innovative new businesses in the area.

The winners of another new category, Best Marketing Plan, will have the services of a marketing mentor as part of the award, with the costs being met by the Marketing Society Scotland, who have become involved in the award scheme for the first time this year.

Guidance on marketing plans and workshops giving assistance with product and food photography have been held for aspiring entrants in the last few months.

Amongst the judges are Craig Stevenson of Braehead Foods who supplies Scottish game and cheese to wholesalers, hotels and restaurants across Europe and former editor of the Scottish Grocer, Karen Peattie a leading commentator on convenience retailing in Scotland.

No two pour shots will catch the same result but, for the most effective shot, the motion must be frozen; the image must be sharp and clear with the liquid translucent and alive. To best achieve this effect, many food photographers use high speed strobe lights, although a similar effect can be obtained by using a continuous light source and a clamp lamp.

Constructing a suitable framework is a simple matter of securing a 100 watt outdoor halogen spotlight into a clamp and taping a glass to a boom stand. With the camera positioned between the light and the glass and with a roll of vellum as a backdrop, different shutter speeds and stop settings will produce a variety of effects and, by setting the camera on rapid mode, a succession of frames will be captured at different stages of the pour.

The stunning ‘pour shots’ created by experienced food photographers, with a stream of crystal clear liquid frozen in flight, have produced some of the most provocative images widely used in the drinks advertising industry.

Taking photographs of food is fraught with difficulty, as the desired end result must appear mouth wateringly natural but the subject material may have only a very few minutes at maximum visual appeal.

Successful food photographers are skilled in overcoming such obstacles, with a number of tried and tested remedies to retain that enticingly steamy just-cooked look or perfect finish.

Chocolate will dry even and shiny if the surface is melted slightly with a hairdryer, a simple trick used to show chocolate at its very best.

Meat must appear plump, juicy and appetising. Steak looks juicier with a coating of glycerine, a shiny, non-evaporating oily liquid which prevents the meat drying out. Browning the sides with a blow torch and creating grill marks with a hot rod completes the picture.

Food photographers use a number of unpalatable tricks to achieve a perfectly glazed skin on a chicken or turkey. Applying a mixture of gravy browning and liquid soap and cooking the bird until the coating caramelises is very effective, as is applying a thin coating of melted brown shoe polish.

To create the appearance of rising steam, a useful trick often put to great effect by food photographers is to put plates of micro waved cotton wool balls behind the focus of the photograph, allowing wisps of steam to waft evocatively around the dish.

Researchers at London Metropolitan University in London and Cornell University in New York collaborated in investigating how and why children choose particular foods and combinations of foods. The conclusions of the study will assist in preparing intervention strategies to improve the nutrition of children in institutional settings.

A number of children and adults were shown a range of photographs, each of which was categorised depending on the position of the food on the plate, the number of food items and the colours of the individual items.

The results were quite surprising, finding that children and adults are tempted by different combinations of food. Adobe Photoshop was used to adjust the relative position of the constituents of exactly the same meal on both round and oval plates to gauge the impact of space around food, a very useful trick which food photographers have used to great effect many times.

It was found that children are more tempted by meals which display the major component at the front of the plate and show each element separately. The adult subjects were more tempted by photographs of meals containing three different items and three different colours, while the children preferred meals containing up to seven different items and six different colours, which researchers believe could contribute to overeating.

The Pink Lady Food Photography exhibition is designed to show new and innovative food photography at its best, giving young and unseen photographers a chance to have their work displayed in public.

Twenty judges from the food world will be judging the entries and sixty winning photographs will be selected for exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London from 25th to 28th April 2012.

The competition has nine categories, covering a whole range of food from earthy vegetables, freshly dug from the field, to the exuberance and variety of food on offer by street vendors.

There is a category for regional food, whether Cornish fisherman with their nets full of the day’s catch or traditional plump pink rhubarb from Yorkshire. Young food photographers have a category of their own, broken into several age groups but with an entirely open choice of subject matter.

There is a category specifically for food portraiture, where photography and art often overlap and where the design of the finished dish is predominant.

To reinforce the sponsorship of Pink Lady apples, which are now the UK’s bestselling apple, a special category with a very narrow criterion is likely to attract the most exciting and creative entries. Called ‘An Apple a Day’ all photographs in this section must be of apples and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children will receive all proceeds from this category.

An invitation to both acknowledged and amateur food photographers to submit entries for the exhibition elicited a huge response. Food photographers from Leeds to LA had the opportunity to enter the competition showcasing their work, with the only criterion being that each entry had to centre around or feature food in some way.

A panel of acclaimed judges from the food and photography world, including Alex Pollack, photo editor of Bon Appetit magazine and Brett Jefferson Stott, Sam Barzilay and Manolis Moresopoulos, photo editors from the London, Athens and New York Photo Festivals respectively, had to choose the 65 photographs to be put on display from over 600 entries.

The exhibits are all food-related and have been taken by a range of photographers, from professional food photographer Beth Galton, who is displaying a plate of different potatoes, while Matthew Aron Roth, who works as a sports photographer, entered a photograph displaying kitchen utensils and photojournalist Charlie Grosso is exhibiting three photographs of open air food markets.

Founded in 2007, the New York Photo Festival was established to explore new concepts and discover new talent in the world of contemporary photography. Each year the Festival has focused on a different theme and has invited guest curators from the world of photography to coordinate the exhibits.