A Second-Place Finish in the 2025 World Food Photography Awards
My first foray into this annual competition netted two semi-finalists and a second-place prize
Earlier this month, the World Food Photography Award winners were announced, and I was pleased to take Second Place in the category Errazuriz Wine Photographer of the Year – Places.
I captured that photo, “Barrel Stencils in Cockburn’s Workshop” (above), during a visit and tour of their port lodge in Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal. Like many of their peers, Symington Family Estates, which owns Cockburn’s, maintains in-house wood shops to care for barrel stocks. Tawny port ages in large tapered barrels that coopers carefully husband, taking them apart when needed, shaving and planing them, and re-fitting them to make them tight again before recycling them back into use. The picture tells the story of legacy but also of sustainability, re-use, and parsimony in producing one of the world’s most exquisite and expensive wines.
Another photo, “Meat Vendor at Mercato Centrale,” was named a Semifinalist in the Food for Sale category but did not advance to Finalist status. I took it on a precious solo day in Florence in June 2023, my first chance to ramble the city since I’d lived there as a student of Florentine Renaissance art. Much has changed at the Mercato in the intervening 40 years, and it’s now a tourist draw, but locals still stop for provisions at vendors like this butcher, shown arms folded, awaiting the midday rush.
This was my first experience entering the World Food Photography Awards. I’m not principally a photographer so hadn’t previously thought myself qualified, but my wine research travels have granted me privileged access to producers and vendors around Europe and North and South America, and this was an opportunity to share what I’ve seen.
Many thanks to the organizers and judges of the awards, and to the many generous makers who have invited me into their lives to see, taste, and capture it all in words and pictures.