Our 2022 capture challenge drew to a close in October after nine months of amazing entries and fabulous winners, as voted for by our wonderful community over on Instagram.

Now its time to vote for the overall winner - such a hard task as they're all amazing!

Below we will list the winners in order of winning throughout the year and link to the challenge blog post which gives ideas and tips for styling and shooting with the technique they each used in their monthly challenge. (These blog posts are a really valuable resource for anybody wanting to learn or explore photography and styling!)

I'm sure you'll agree that all of the winners are fantastic stylists and creatives but there can only be one overall winner, taking home another £100 BVS voucher!

Every valid (published) vote will be entered into a prizedraw to win a £25 voucher - you could win £25 just for voting!

Please vote by commenting your favourite in the comments box at the bottom of this post - you will need to use a valid email address to validate the comment.  One vote per person please - no cheating.

Here's our run down on the best gifts for your creative or self-employed loved one this year 

For the getting-serious-about-this stylist - from £176 (saving up to £77)

Our handcrafted surfaces are a luxurious treat for those who are taking their photography to the next level and are ready for investment pieces.  The gift set of two (or 4) hand-painted backdrops and gift set of two bespoke canvas backdrops offer a rare opportunity to give a generous gift and enjoy up to 25% off.

We can work with you to create designs that they'll love for Christmas delivery or you can surprise them with a gift card and details of this gift, for them to work with us on the designs after the holidays in January. 

When you choose 'January production' you unlock an extra 5% off!

My mum grows the most beautiful organic apples and my kids love that caramel sweetness so tarte tatin is an easy, go-to recipe for our household each late summer.

I wanted to shoot some rustic food with a freshly-picked, home-grown 'garden shed' vibe on our new 'Jack' backdrop so this recipe offered the perfect opportunity to style and enjoy these leafy homegrown apples.

I've given the ice cream a slightly grown up twist by infusing the cream with rosemary before making into ice cream - it balances the sweet caramel, as does tossing your quartered apples in lemon juice before assembling them in your oven dish.

I hope you enjoy this sweet, sticky, creamy mess!

Like most businesses in the UK we are facing increased costs in nearly all aspects of our work.  We have thought hard to make our product price increases as minimal as possible, while allowing us to continue to offer attractive shipping costs and special offers on shipping and products.

On the 1st of July the following products will change price as follows:

Welcome to May and our next #bvs capture challenge!  Enter for your chance to WIN a £100 or £25 voucher

About our theme - using hard light

#bvshardlight

I am only just starting to play with and see the possibilities with using hard light in my photography - as a 99% natural-light-photographer I need direct sunlight to get hard light and strong shadows.

But its so much fun exploring this technique now I have some lighting kit! Strong, direct light gives you those hard edged, highly defined shadows rather than the softly graduating patches of darkness you get from soft - or diffused - light.

Typically, larger light sources (that will wrap light around your products and props) produce soft shadows, and smaller, single light sources (like slim, directional light) produce harder light and shadows because there is little or no other light softening the edges from other angles.

Introducing The Styling Handbook, a new creative agency focused on authentic, quality-led content and e-commerce for food and lifestyle brands

The Styling Handbook is the new home of our styling, photography and marketing services - somewhere we can share our passion for authentic, quality-led content without confusing the message here - where 99% of you visit us purely for photography backdrops!

While BVS is still an important focus for me, I'm really excited to be working on more commercial photography and marketing projects and have the time to train and support other businesses - thanks largely to our amazing team at BVS!

We're already working with some fantastic global brands and local businesses, offering -

• commercial styling and still life photography 
• remote and on-site content creation, including restaurant photography
• marketing strategy and social media services
• e-commerce strategy and design
• styling and photography training and workshops

Welcome to April and our next #bvs capture challenge!  Enter for your chance to WIN a £100 or £25 voucher

About the #bvs challenge

Our monthly challenges are open to everyone in the creative community, hosted via Instagram, co-hosted by myself (Sophie!) and some of our brand ambassadors – Anna, Suze, Matt or Patrick – plus special guest judges each month.

For each challenge we will share professional styling and photography tips and ideas that follow a monthly theme. The tips and themes explored should be useful in all still life photography - including food, product and lifestyle content.

We hope to inspire our community and be inspired ourselves – I always find it fascinating how people can interpret things differently and use the same theory in lots of different creative ways! 

Welcome to February and a new #bvs capture challenge! Enter for your chance to WIN a £100 or £25 voucher.

About the #bvs challenge

Our monthly challenges are open to everyone in the creative community, hosted via Instagram, co-hosted by myself (Sophie!) and some of our brand ambassadors – Anna, Suze, Matt or Patrick – plus special guest judges each month.

The February 2022 challenge theme is monochrome and we're thrilled to have Roberta @healthylittlecravings as our guest judge helping Anna, Suze and I select the finalists.

#bvsmonochrome

Most people think of black and white images and artwork when they hear monochrome but it actually describes the use of any single colour (or hue) in different shades. In monochromatic images the colour remains the same but the vibrancy, brightness and - with artistic license - tints and tones differ slightly.

I'm so thrilled to announce our first ever challenge, open to everyone in the creative community via Instagram, and co-hosted by Clementine @clemfoodie!

About this new challenge

#BVSinspired is a new seasonal styling challenge ran through Instagram, created by Sophie in collaboration with food creatives and experts and open for all to enter for a chance for one winner to take home £100 in BVS vouchers and a runner up to receive a £25 voucher.

Through sharing techniques and ideas we hope to support and inspire our community in developing new styling and photography skills while celebrating the seasons and building a deeper connection with nature.

Now is the time to enjoy wild garlic and this year I wanted to do more with it than pesto!  Apparently you can pickle the flowers which will be my next way to enjoy them, but here I'm showing you how to make wild garlic and cheddar soup AND four different ways to style it.

If you like broccoli and stilton soup - and garlic - I'm sure you will love this recipe!  The punchy wild garlic is met by the strong cheese and softened with cream and chicken stock (or veggie stock if you prefer to skip the meat element and make this a vegetarian recipe).  As always I class this as a lazy, tasty and pretty recipe.

I'm showing you so many different ways to compose a shot for this soup recipe as I have used it as an example in my Styling & Composition course  and thought I'd share some of them here.  I hope you find the ideas and compositions useful - there are many more styling tips and tricks in my courses if you want to check them out!

Its the question everyone always asks - what do food stylists use to make the dishes look so amazing in food photography? 

The real answer is years of experience and practise of course!

But you can get a bit closer to achieving that perfect burger or beautifully frosted berries by having these bits of kit on hand ready to brush, stick, tweeze, spray, blast and blaze. 

Obviously the kit you need will change from shoot to shoot, dish to dish with extra machines and kit required depending on what food you're styling - if you work in a niche food group or only bake cookies for example you'll soon figure out what they are and how best to style your food for photographs.

Hi :) If you didn't already know, I'm a stylist and content creator too, so I want to share some affordable, everyday food photography backdrops and props with you, ones that you can get on a pretty small budget or may already have at home.  

I'm a big advocate of having lots of different options* and I'm not naive enough to believe or propose that you should ONLY EVER USE MY PRINTED BACKDROPS! :D For me, good food styling starts with a beautiful dish of food - everything else is purely framing - and using layers and texture is a big part of that for me.  So even though I often start with one of my backdrops when creating content, there will always be other elements and smaller surfaces to compose the shot and frame the hero. (UNLESS! I am creating content to sell the backdrop itself - then propping will be minimal to show the surface off!)

Styling surfaces come in all shapes and sizes, and if you're photographing food or other smallish still life cameos, it should be easy to find interesting, affordable backgrounds big enough for your needs.

I'm not sure if its a chilli, a soup, a casserole, a stew, a one pot or something else - but I am CERTAIN that it is delish and has everything in it for a complete meal (it's paleo if you're into that).  You can of course add nachos, chunky bread or even chips to dip in.  I'm a big fan of soup and chips, is that a thing where you are?! 

As usual for me, this recipe is a mash up of things I've eaten out, recipes I've used and flavours I want to try.  I've made it three times now and for friends yesterday and the verdict was YUM so now I'm ready to share it with you! 

Well that's a tricky question isn't it! And for several reasons.

Firstly, because people (British people sorry!) are taught not to discuss money, and secondly, because freelancers or anybody pitching for work are understandably nervous about publishing or discussing their prices for many different but mostly logical reasons.

Prices may go up or down due to;

• client budget - this is an industry where different areas like editorial, advertising or TV will pay different rates for the same job due to the end use and historical ad agency style pricing 
• kudos - if you're somebody that I really want to work with or think would look great in my portfolio I may drop my price if asked to
• stage of career/experience - early on in your career you may charge less and increase with each year of experience 
• need to work/lack of work - we all have those quiet periods where we will take any job just to keep working and eat.

Also there are different ways of pricing - perhaps per project if its a large or ongoing shoot or per day with extra services as add-ons if required.

I will be discussing the day rate pricing strategy which I think most freelance food stylists and prop/still life stylists work to.

So what can you charge per day for food styling or as a prop stylist?

I don't know about you but I struggle with cake styling.  I think its because I don't like triangles, and I also hate that look when you cut out a piece of cake and when you take it away from the rest of the cake you're left with a pacman face.  I just can't stop looking at it in a cake shot, it's all I can see!

SO.  I decided to set myself a challenge of shooting a cake overhead.  I'm avoiding the pacman issue by only shooting it whole and then divided in pieces and repeated, without the rest of the cake in the shot.  I'm looking to some of my instagram faves for inspo and pushing myself to do a light, colourful and dark version for each set up.

Here's what I created, why I did what I did and how I feel about each image!  Please do comment your feedback below and let me know what cake styling challenges you face or how you've overcome them in your own food photography :)

Hi! Asparagus season is here in the UK so I'm enjoying it A LOT at the mo.  One of my favourite ways to eat it is dipped in eggs and rather fortuitously a friend dropped round some neighbours duck eggs yesterday so I have been dreaming about this lunch since then!

Skip down for the recipe below or get this for a food styling win - I had a happy accident when boiling the eggs!

I went to a middle eastern wine tasting recently and enjoyed some beautiful spiced beef and egg plant (or aubergine!) and I just couldn't get the flavour out of my head. You know, when you're thinking about what you ate somewhere days later?!  

So I just had to look for a recipe for what I guessed was a Lebanese dish, and I searched 'beef and eggplant' on ckbk and this absolute belter came up from the cookbook, 'Classic Lebanese Cuisine' (more details at the end of this post!).