Off to Work Event Photography Awards return with Reading Festival winner

The Off to Work Event Photography Awards returned to the Mayfair townhouse venue No.4 Hamilton Place yesterday, 4 October, following a virtual event in 2020 and a pandemic-enforced pause in 2021.

The not-for-profit competition, which was open to images captured during both 2020 and 2021, saw the overall winner trophy and a cheque for £1,000 picked up by Luke Dyson, who captured a panoramic shot of Festival Republic’s Reading Festival (pictured). Titled ‘Cherry Picking Season’, the image was captured while Dyson was lofted 65ft above ground by a cherry-picker lorry.

This year’s event featured two new categories: Portraits, which was won by a shot of King Charles III and the one-off Covid Chronicles which included images of masks and social distancing.

More than 100 shortlisted shots were on display at the awards event, which featured canapes and bowl food by caterers Blue Strawberry and production by Visions.

Runner-up was the winner of the Music category ‘Pianoman’, taken by Carlos-Alvar Gonzalez, who flew in from Mexico to collect his trophies. The two top Highly-Commended accolades went to regular Catering category winner, Deb Porter, for her ‘Reflected Chef’, and Jack Boskett for ‘Horsepower’, which encapsulated an experiential event that was three years in the planning. For the first time ever there was also a dead heat – in the Weddings category, which was shared by Steve Rooney and Andy Griffiths.

Competition founder Philip Atkins, MD of staffing agency Off to Work said, “Photography does so much to amplify, justify and sustain the events industry, so we felt it was important not to wait until 2023 to relaunch the competition, especially as we could include some amazing images taken during the Covid crisis. The competition was as tough as ever and the images entered captured both the resilience and brilliance of the events sector.”

Competition director Graham Hill said, “We owe huge debts of gratitude to our sponsors and event partners for making the competition and awards event such a success. To our array of industry-leading judges as well, who had over 300 photos to review. The competition has been a great success and will run again in 2023, with entries opening in November as the awards event will return to its traditional schedule and culminate in May.”

Full list of winners and categories: