The 2011 Eat. Drink. Blog. Photography Competition has been a wonderful showcase of some of the best food photography from the Australian food blogging community over the past year. From a large pool of entrants, our judging panel of food photography/industry professionals whittled the submissions down to a selection of 15 finalists, as shown above.

There are two sets of prizes awarded to the best images out of the group of finalists. An IMPACT Award, for the best image as selected by our judging panel. There are also winner and runner-up prizes for the Community Award, as voted by the food blogging community, readers and the general public.

Without further ado, the winners of the 2011 Eat. Drink. Blog. Photography Competition are…

Community Award Winner

“Closer to Luke’s Salad” – Reminiscence of a Food Tragic

Congratulations to Stephen of Reminiscence of a Food Tragic for winning the 2011 Eat. Drink. Blog. Photography Competition Community Award with the most number of votes. He will soon be the recipient of the coveted KitchenAid stand mixer in the colour of his choice.

Community Award Runner-Up

“Hanoi Cafe” – A food lover’s journey

Anh from A food lover’s journey comes in at second place to win the Community Award runner-up prize of assorted bakeware from World Kitchen. Congratulations!

IMPACT Award Winner

“Tomato And Mustard Chutney” – Cook Republic

Last but certainly not least, the IMPACT Award, the best image as selected by our esteemed judging panel of food photography/industry professionals, is awarded to “Tomato and Mustard Chutney”. Congratulations to Sneh of Cook Republic for winning the grand prize of a $1000 VISA gift card, which she can put towards a new camera, lens, or whatever else her heart desires.

For the winners of the 2011 Eat. Drink. Blog. Photography Competition, you will be contacted soon regarding the delivery of your respective prizes.

A big thanks to our competition partner IMPACT Communications Australia for providing the prizes and for their support. Thank you also to our panel of judges – Quentin Jones, Natalie Boog & Julie Lee.

Finally, thank you to everyone that has participated in this competition. We hope to see you all again for next year’s competition.

This year’s finalists are (in alphabetical order):

• A food lover’s journey – Hanoi Cafe
• A food lover’s journey – Tea Break
• Citrus and Candy – Apple Zucchini Bread with Honeycomb Butter
• Citrus and Candy – Vietnamese Chicken Salad
• Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once – Cherries
• Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once – Garlic
• Cook Republic – Tomato And Mustard Chutney
• Gastronomous Anonymous – caramelised onion tart
• Gastronomous Anonymous – pumpkin custard with pumpkin seed
• My delicious blog – Untitled
• Phuoc’n Delicious – Rhubarb
• Reminiscence of a Food Tragic – Closer to Luke’s Salad
• The Food Pornographer – Chicken man
• The Food Pornographer – Chopping coconuts
• The French Wench – Heartichoke

Congratulations to the finalists, and a thanks to everyone that participated in the competition thus far, including our panel of esteemed judges – Quentin Jones, Natalie Boog & Julie Lee.

While the winner of Judge’s Award has been finalised, the Community Award prize is still very much up for grabs.

Vote for your favourite finalists by going to the Eat. Drink. Blog. Media Hub and clicking on the Like button of their image(s). The entry with the most Likes will win the coveted KitchenAid stand mixer.

But wait, there’s more…

With thanks to our competition partner IMPACT Communications Australia, there is now a runner’s up prize for the entry with the second highest number of Likes.

The runner’s up prize pack courtesy of World Kitchen, with a total retail value of around $100, consists of:

• Baker’s Secret Whoopie Pan
• Baker’s Secret Loose Base Square Tart Pan
• Baker’s Secret 4 Piece Magentic Measuring Cup Set
• Baker’s Secret 5 Piece Magnetic Measuring Spoon Set
• Pyrex 2 Cup Measuring Jug

Voting closes Sunday 18 December 2011, with the winners of the Judge’s Award and the Community Award prizes to be announced on Monday 19 December 2011.

Good luck with the competition.

The official photos for Eat. Drink. Blog. 2011 are now available on the Media Hub.

The images in the gallery are a visual diary chronicling the day’s events from the setup of the conference at Electrolux through to dinner at Kingsleys Steak & Crab.

A big thanks to Christina Thai and Peggy Wong for volunteering their time to shoot some wonderful images.

If you would like to get a copy of any of the images from the day, please send an email to eatdrinkblogau@gmail.com and let us know which ones you’re after.

For anyone looking to use these images for promotion, advertising or marketing purposes, let us know in the email and we’ll get you in touch with the photographers to discuss usage rights.

There are a few photos that have been submitted without any info (possibly due to some error). If these are your images, please resubmit your application to ensure that you’re in the running for the competition.

When submitting your images, if you are not redirected to a page indicating your submission was successful, there was likely a problem with your submission e.g. image issue above.

One sure fire way of guaranteeing a failed submission is by not reading the submission guidelines carefully. Please be especially mindful that the images submitted are around or less than 500Kb in size.

To avoid any disappointment, if you are uncertain that submission was successful, please send an email to eatdrinkblogau@gmail.com to follow up on the matter. So long as this email is sent prior to the close of the competition, your submission, even if unsuccessful, will still be considered in the running for the comp.

Lastly, follow the official #eatdrinkblog2011 hashtag and/or @eatdrinkblogau to keep up to date on info regarding the competition. To those that have entered or are about the enter the competition, good luck with your submissions.

We’d encouraged tweeting during the day, and boy did you oblige. The day’s proceedings were so well tweeted and so many #eatdrinkblog2011 tweets flooded the Twittersphere that for a while, #eatdrinkblog2011 was even a trending topic!

Many thanks to the many guest presenters and panelists who gave up their time and in many cases, forked out significant amounts to travel interstate and present at this conference. We are so grateful for your contribution to the day!

Thank you also to the sponsors who gave very generously to the day – without their generosity, this day could not have been as well equipped and catered as it was and importantly, we couldn’t have made it free to all the conference attendees.

And lastly on behalf of the other organisers – a very big thank you to the staff that chipped in on the day – Tammi our MC; Christina and Peggy our photographers; Vicki our videographer; Thang our social media manager; and Anna our interviewer.

Below we have provided some links to information about the some of the conference sessions including presentations (where available), presenter profiles, menus, recipes and attendees featured during the day.

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Food, recipes links and more:

Conference venue provided by Electrolux

Name tags and lanyards provided by bookarestaurant

Breakfast, morning tea and afternoon tea pastries provided by Brasserie Bread

Breakfast menu

Morning tea

Afternoon tea

Fruit platters provided by IMPACT Communications Australia

Coffee on the day provided by Toby’s Estate

Juice Bar provided by Breville

Juice bar recipes

Delice macaron tower and Lindor chocolate balls provided by Lindt

Drinks provided by Daylesford and Hepburn Mineral Springs

Lunch and lamb masterclass provided by MLA, prepared by Nonie Dwyer

Nonie Dwyer Chef profile (below) and photo

Nonie Dwyer is a chef whose passion for seasonal, local and ethical food has been honed by years working in the UK. From a multi award-winning restaurant in Scotland, to Michelin-starred restaurants in England, to three years as sous-chef and acting head chef at the famous River Cottage Headquarters working for Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. This role was as diverse as it was enjoyable, including cheffing, teaching, recipe development, food styling and TV production work. The role allowed Nonie to develop her love of butchery and make delicious use of every part of an animal. One of Nonie’s first butchery lessons was teaching one of Gordon Ramsey’s head chefs. Everything has seemed easier since.

Lunch recipe: slow cooked shoulder of spiced lamb

Beef and lamb cuts chart (although I note there is no lamb bacon cut)

Crab workshop by Kingsleys

Singapore chilli crab recipe

Conference dinner provided by Kingsleys Steak and Crabhouse

Conference dinner menu

Chargrilled flat iron steak with chimichurri slow roasted beef tenderloin recipe

Information on kiss chillis (the pickled chillis used in the conference dinner entree)

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Presentation links:
Note: no presentation slides were used for the Food photography workshop; Food Styling workshop; Crab masterclass; Bread masterclass; Monetising and professional blogging; Food Culture and Ethics.

Legal panel

Presentation on copyright regarding use of pictures and recipes, courtesy of Dominic Villa

Presentation on defamation, courtesy of Stephen Estcourt, QC

SEO session

Presentation on SEO for blogs, courtesy of Michael Gall

Writing seminar

Presentation on how to make your writing shine, courtesy of Valerie Khoo

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Confirmed attendees present at Eat Drink Blog 2011:

For those interested, we have listed below all the bloggers that attended Eat Drink Blog 2011 (in alphabetical order):

• 84th and 3rd
• adobo down under
• amystown
• Capital Gourmand
• Cats – Love – Cooking
• Citrus and Candy
• Cook Republic
• Cooking from the heart
• Corridor Kitchen
• crunchytiger
• cupcakiedolly
• Dining with a Stud
• Dinner in Ten Minutes
• Eat, drink + be Kerry
• eat, drink, stagger
• Epicureans Answer
• Everybody Loves Ramen
• Fine Diner
• Food Endeavours of the Blue Apocalypse
• Food, booze and shoes
• Gastromony
• Gastronomy Gal
• Gosstronomy
• Green Cilantro
• I dream in Chocolate
• I’m so Hungree
• J’s Kitchen
• Jenius
• Lambs’ Ears and Honey
• Law Geek Down Under
• M(i)sCh(i)ef
• Miss Lolly Loves Food
• Miss Morag’s Morsels
• Morsels & Musings
• My Aching Head
• My Delicious Blog
• Nic Cooks
• Noodlies
• Paddington Pantry
• Passionatemae
• Phuoc’n Delicious
• Progressive Dinner Party
• Reminiscence of a food tragic
• Richard Elliot’s Blog
• Sefie Eats
• Souvlaki For The Soul
• Starloz
• Stone Soup
• Sugar’s Sweet Blog
• Sugarlace
• Tammi Tasting Terroir
• Tea For Six
• The $120 Food Challenge
• The Adventures of Miss Piggy
• The Capers of the Kitchen Crusader
• The Cook’s Notebook
• The Empty Fridge
• The Food Mentalist
• The French Wench
• The Gourmet Forager
• the heart of food
• The Hungry Australian
• the hungry duck
• The Last Appetite
• the little lioness
• The Spotted Pufferfish
• the way it crumbles
• When the world stops spinning
• winos and foodies

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Conference day prize winners:

Our sponsors generously provided conference day prizes with total prize pool worth $950!

• Toby’s Estate hamper worth $120 won by crunchytiger
• Brasserie Bread voucher worth $150 won by adobo down under
• 3x Lindt prize hampers worth $150 each won by amystown, I’m so Hungree, and Sugar’s Sweet Blog
• Breville Juicer worth $230 won by Dinner in ten minutes

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And as you would have noticed with all the cameras and AV gear around on the day, plenty of photos were taken throughout the day as well as interviews with all the presenters. All of these will be available within the next week in the Eat Drink Blog media hub. But for now, here’s a small sneak peek from the day…

Breakfast pastries courtesy of Brasserie Bread

Fruit platters courtesy of IMPACT Communications Australia

Delice Macaron Tower and Lindor balls courtesy of Lindt

Tammi Jonas (@tammois) the MC for Eat Drink Blog 2011

Dominic Villa (@under_exposed) presenting at the legal panel

Stephen Estcourt (@stephenestcourt) presenting at the legal panel with Tammi as MC

Michael Gall (@MyAchingHead) presenting at the SEO seminar

Valerie Khoo (@valeriekhoo) presenting at Writing Seminar

Lunch prep underway

Nonie Dwyer presenting the lamb masterclass

Chef Lars Svensson of the Kingsleys Restaurant Group presenting the Crab Workshop

Matt Brock of Brasserie Bread presenting the Bread Masterclass

Quentin Jones presenting at the Food Photography Workshop

Peter Georgakopoulos' (@souvlakiman) Food Styling Workshop in full swing

One of the creations in the Food Styling Workshop

The entree from the EDB2011 conference dinner at Kingsleys - featured is the smoked yellowfin tuna carpaccio with pickled chilli and pistachio

For those that have a post on the conference day – if you haven’t already then please email the link to us and we’ll add you to the growing list of blog posts already featured here.

And don’t forget – we still have the Eat Drink Blog 2011 Photography Competition – entries close this Friday with some excellent prizes on offer, and remember you have to be in it to win it!

Many thanks again for all that attended and made the 5th November Eat Drink Blog day possible!

Simon, Jen, Reem and Trina

Eat Drink Blog 2011 conference organisers

You’ll soon receive a more formal thank you, along with a media kit of a lot of supplementary information regarding the conference for your blog posts, including Michael Gall’s SEO presentation slides (sorry!). However, I thought I’d take this opportunity now to quickly offer my personal thanks to all the attendees, presenters, sponsors, followers on Twitter, and especially the staff, for making the Eat. Drink. Blog. Conference 2011 such a success.

For those of you who have or will publish a post on your experiences at the conference, we’ll be setting up a sidebar widget on this blog giving some linkage love to your blog post. It’ll also make it easier for those interested to read and view the experiences of the attendees.

Please send us an email to eatdrinkblogau@gmail.com with your blog post link, and we’ll look to add it to this blog.

Also, if you have some images that you wish to share of the day’s events, please feel free to send the images with attachments to the same email address eatdrinkblogau@gmail.com. We’ll look to setup a separate gallery on the Eat. Drink. Blog. Media Hub, as well as give you credit and some linkage love to your blog there too. As always, you will retain full copyright of any images you send us.

We look forward to seeing all your accounts of the days events!

As indicated by the above image, the KitchenAid prize is indeed their latest model which was released only a short while ago. It comes with the standard attachments i.e. beater, whisk & dough hook; a new flexi-beater, as well as a clear glass bowl so you can see your cherished prize beating together a cookie dough, whisking up a batch of marshmallows, kneading brioche dough on the dough hook or flexi-beating whatever… ah… requires flexi-beating.

As for colours, the winner of this prize is free to choose whichever colour they desire. Colours include Candy Apple (red), Raspberry Ice (hot pink), Medallion Silver (mid grey), Black Storm, Electric Blue, Sugar Pearl Silver (light grey), Café Latte (white) and Antique Copper, as pictured above.

If you haven’t already done so, feel free to enter the competition for a chance to win this fabulous prize, or the major prize of a $1000 VISA gift card to spend on new camera, lens, lighting gear or whatever else the heart desires. However, be quick as entries for the competitions close next Friday 11th November.

Check out the current entries at the Eat. Drink. Blog. Media Hub.

I look forward to seeing all your mouth-watering entries!

Edit: Sorry, one last thing I’d forgotten to mention. For anyone interested to know, the retail value of this prize is $799.00.

If you would like to participate in the survey and voice your opinions, feel free to do so at the following address:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/R5JDSQ5

The additional content that we intend to provide are as follows:

• Live Tweets – Thang (Noodlies) will be the dulcet keystrokes behind the @eatdrinkblogau Twitter account on the conference day, posting insights and images of the day’s events.
• Photos – Christina (the way it crumbles), along with a fellow associate Peggy, will provide the official photos for the conference. These images will be used for the live tweets (above) and will also be available on the Eat. Drink. Blog. Media Hub after the conference.
• Videos – Vicki, an associate of Jen (Jenius), will be the primary camera operator and video editor. Video of the conference will be gradually released over time on the Eat. Drink. Blog. Media Hub as they’re produced.

Speaking of video, we would like to get a sense of what content you would be interested to see, either at the conference and/or as video. A poll has been setup at the end of this post. If you could spare a moment to fill in the poll, we’d very much appreciate it as it will help us to prioritise and focus on the content to be provided.

Due to the nature how various conference segments are presented, we may not be able to provide a full video coverage. However, we’ll do our best to provide relevant content where possible.

If you want to join in on the action as it unfolds, follow the official Twitter account @eatdrinkblogau. If you intend to tweet about the conference, please use our official hashtag #eatdrinkblog2011.

For more details regarding each segment, refer to the conference program.

A long overdue update regarding the Eat. Drink. Blog. 2011 photography competition.

As it was stated in a previous blog post, the organising committee decided on making some changes to improve the nature of the photography competition. We’ve moved away from the photography exhibition and photo prints of last year’s conference and instead directed our efforts to obtaining some seriously cool prizes for the winners of this year’s comp.

The competition will operate in much the same manner as before, though entries for the competition will now close Friday 11th November 2011 (enter the competition). The judging panel will select the top 15 entries as finalists of the competition. From the pool of finalists, two awards will be given – the IMPACT Award, for the best image selected by the judging panel, as well as the Community Award, selected by food blogging peers, readers and the general public.

Prizes

The prizes for each of these awards are:

• IMPACT Award – $1000 VISA gift card, that can be used toward upgrading your camera gear, make the move from your dinky point-and-shoot to a DSLR format, purchase that drool-worthy lens on the top of your wishlist, or buy a studio lighting kit so you can shoot with beautiful light at any hour of the day. Whether it be these options or some other, the choice is entirely yours to make.
• Community Award – A KitchenAid stand mixer, for the serious baker, cook and recipe blogger at heart (model, colour and retail value to be determined).

Judges & Judging Criteria

For the judging panel, a small group of industry professionals that deal with food photography as a part of their career were selected. The judges for the photography competition are:

• Quentin Jones – A veteran photographer who has worked for Fairfax Media for over 25 years, he currently shoots for the Sydney Morning Herald, specialising in food, architecture & lifestyle photography. You can check out his portfolio on his website Inkstain Media.
• He is also the person running the Photography Workshop at the conference.
• Natalie Boog – A professional photographer whose food photos have been published on the cover of Good Living magazine and was the photographer involved with the country food flag images for the World Chef Showcase 2009. She is also the blogger for Seasonal Diners. For more of her portfolio work, check out her professional website.
• Julie Lee – The Managing Editor for Australian Good Taste magazine.

The judging panel will select the finalists, as well as the winner of the IMPACT Award, judging each entry on three main criteria of equal weighting:

1. Technical – This refers to the technical aspects of the image e.g. an appropriate usage of exposure, colour balance, sharpness, depth of field and so forth.
2. Aesthetics – How beautiful and visually pleasing the subject, the composition and other elements of the image are, and how well they work with each other.
3. Creativity – The interesting and unique manner in which the subject and other elements in the image are portrayed, and how the message/story of the image is communicated.

Details regarding the judging of the Community Award will be announced around the time the finalists have been determined. Generally speaking, voting for the Community Award will run over a specified period and the finalist with the most votes for their entry will win the award.

For those of you who may be intimidated by bloggers with professional-level gear while you only use, say, a basic point-and-shoot, please bear in mind that the technical criteria of a photo is but one part out of three judging criteria. Just because you have professional gear, it doesn’t mean that your photos will be aesthetically pleasing or creative, let alone guarantee that you’ll score full marks in the technical area for that matter. Take it from someone who knows!

There’s no cost to enter the competition. So long as you meet the entry criteria on the competition submission page, you may be in with more of a chance than you think.

While this is not a part of the judging criteria nor a condition of entry, to make the most of your submission I’d advise submitting images of sufficiently large resolution within the file size limit of around 500Kb. Something around 500 pixels or greater on the shortest side of the image e.g. 500 x 700, 800 x 600 etc. You don’t have to but it’d be easier to judge an image that can be viewed full screen over one that is the size of a postage stamp.

Change to Conditions

For those of you that have already submitted an entry into the competition, there have been a few minor changes to the competition conditions that you’ll need to be aware of. Check out the Conditions of Entry for the full list of conditions. However, I’ll make note of the main ones below.

Firstly, a condition has been added whereby the winners of the competition (i.e. the IMPACT Award and Community Award) will need to allow the use of their winning entry for media releases regarding the competition. If this is some you do not agree to and wish to withdraw from the competition, please send me an email to eatdrinkblogau@gmail.com to let me know.

Secondly, due to the extension of the closing date for competition entries, it’s been decided to extend the blog post publish date range for valid entries. You can now submit any photos used in blog posts published between the dates of 1st September 2010 through to 27th October 2011.

Lastly, due to the these stated changes, revelation regarding the judging criteria, as well as other minor changes to the entry conditions, prior to the closing date for competition entries, existing entrants are permitted to do the following:

1. Resubmit your entry – In this case, you will need to resubmit you entry in full. Your previously entries will be deleted and replaced by the new one. This also applies to those that have submitted less than 5 images and wish to add more.
2. Withdraw – Send an email to eatdrinkblogau@gmail.com to let us know that you want your entry withdrawn from the competition. There’s no need to state the reason why and we won’t ever to ask for one.
3. Do nothing – Your existing entry will remain in the competition as is.

Finally, a big thanks to our competition partner IMPACT Communication Australia for their generous donation of these fabulous competition prizes. I look forward to seeing your wonderful entries