Cape Town photographer Hein van Tonder was recently announced a finalist in the 2019 Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year competition held in London.
He tells us more about competition and what he's up to next.
The competition is the leading food photography competition in the world with Pink Lady Apples, who have been the headline sponsor since the beginning eight years ago. The competition gets bigger and tougher each year - this year there were more than 9,000 entries from 77 countries.
This was the fourth year that my work had been selected for the finals of the competition and a further three images of mine were selected for the shortlist stage of the competition - two of those images were shot for Katelyn Williams's best-selling book, Chocolate.
I was lucky to go to India on a year-end foodie holiday. We joined Delhi Food Walks on one of their Street Food Tours (which was amazing!). As we walked through the spice market we saw a worker fast asleep on the bags of chillies. My eyes were watering and nose was burning but here was this man having a nap among all that pungency and noise. It was a case of getting the shot before he woke. I got it with seconds to spare - his friends were laughing at us taking photos and he woke.
I started my blog called heinstirred a few years ago as a hobby. I got requests to photograph and create recipes for clients. About three years ago I decided to become a full-time photographer.
I am off to Lebanon in a few weeks to start work on Sophia Lindop's new cookbook...