I’ve had  some feedback from the Wanderlust Travel Photo of the Year 2013 competition which was held last night at Earls Court in London.

The event included a presentation of each image in the show with input from  Simon Calder, Senior Travel Editor of The Independent newspaper, and the editors of Wanderlust magazine.

Last night the UK’s top travel magazine, Wanderlust, announced the winners of its Travel Photographer of the Year. I survived two rounds of judging to be whittled down from 8,000 entrants and was a finalist in the Portfolio category with five images taken in Inle Lake, Myanmar. The exhibition was held at Earls Court in London as part of the Destinations travel show.

Alas, no cigar or silly hat for me this year but it was great to be in the final along with some immensely talented photographers. I was unable to attend the awards so my cousin who is based in London went along for the free wine…oh, and to take a couple of snaps. Thank you, Emma.

Interesting to note that Wanderlust still refuses to accept the official name of the country and changed Myanmar to Burma on my image descriptions. Even the UN now acknowledges the name Myanmar, as of course do the entire population of the country.

I spent five days in Yangon, or Rangoon if you are of the colonial era mindset,  last week in a fabulous frenzy of food photography and will post images once I catch up with the backlog of other recent trips.

I’m travelling back from the UK today after my first visit in almost four years. I’ve been here catching up with friends, drinking the best beer in the world, and attending the ‘Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year’ exhibition as one of the finalists. The image below was selected in the final seven for the ‘Food in the Street’ category. It was taken in Yangon, Myanmar.

The opening night of the exhibition at The Mall Gallery in London was an enjoyable evening with a full house tucking into light bites by the sponsors, Pink Lady Apples and free flow Champagne by Taittinger. Henry Dimbleby, one of the co-founders of Leon Restaurants was on-hand to present the awards in ten categories.

As with any competition the winning images caused a few raised eyebrows, and I was personally surprised to see such a quintessentially European shot scoop the top prize when there were so many intriguing and exotic images in the exhibition. Hats off to the team at Pink Lady Apples for doing such a great job with the show and to One Vision Imaging who printed up the images.

The exhibition now goes on tour around the UK and you can catch it at the BBC Good Food Show NEC Birmingham 13-17 June, at the Ludlow Food Festival 7 – 9 September and the BBC Good Food Show 28 November – 2 December. You can see the finalists on the Pink Lady website. Images are also available for sale.