FOOD dominates our lives from sustenance to celebration and commerce and these amazing photos from a worldwide competition show its significance across the globe.

From a family sharing lunch on a rubbish tip to a spectacularly colourful shot of tomatoes all these pictures were finalists in the Pink Lady ® Food Photographer of the Year.

More than 8,000 pictures from 60 countries had to be whittled down by the judges with 23 different categories.

Winner of the Bringing Home the Harvest category was Indian photographer Debdatta Chakraborty with his picture of villagers trying their luck fishing in a river in West Bengal, India, created when water from a nearby dam is released.

Runner up in the same category was Mohammed Shajahan from Bangladesh, showing all the boats taking produce along the Shangu River, a route unchanged for thousands of years.

For sheer colour, it would be hard to beat Brit Georgia Glynn Smith's stunning shot of green, red, purple and yellow tomatoes, highly commended in the Marks&Spencer Food Portraiture.

Another colourful finalist is this picture of village women drying red chillies taken by Moniruzzaman Sazal in his native Bangladesh, that netted him runner up in the Food in the Field category.

Closer to home, a toffee apple being made by hand in a Scarborough factory got Mike Nowill highly commended in the Food Bloggers section, with another UK snapper Aniko Lueff winning the category with a luxurious shot of honey drizzling onto a plate.

A massively overloaded scooter spilling over with a large woman and her vegetable produce taken in Hespaw Town, Myanmar, by British photographer Antonia Deutsch got highly commended in the Food for Sale category.

Fellow Brit Hamish Scott-Brown was also in Myanamar to take this second placed Food for Sale picture of a woman selling food on a train.

And if you were to go to Dingle in Ireland, you might be lucky enough to be served the same beautifully arranged fruit platter that Austrian snapper Josef Hofer got highly commended in the InterContinental Food at the Table category.

Keeping the competition accessible to all was borne out in the mobile On the Phone section with Brit Xenia Cobb's highly commended snap of a fisherman's catch in Praia da Tocha, Portugal.

The politics of food is always a controversial subject and noone could be unmoved by the winning shot in that section showing a truck full of dogs on the way to slaughter in Vietnam.

Snapper Grzegorz Tomasz Karnas, from Poland, said: "This picture was taken in the North of Vietnam.

"The dogs are kept alive by being showered during transport to the slaughter houses. It is around 45 degrees out there."

Another heartbreaking shot is a family eating lunch on the rubbish tip that they work on in Bangladesh by Rafayat Haque Khan which got him placed third in the World Food Programme Food for Life category.

Winning that was another shot from Bangladesh by Probal Rashid showing a fisherman cooking on a fishing boat in Bhola.

On a lighter note this studio shot of a food sheep with a cauliflower for a body and colander for a head by Italian Patrizia Piga was highly commended in the Production Paradise Food off the Press section.

This colourful basket of autumn squash by Brit Sally Ann Stone was highly commended in the One Vision Imaging Cream of the Crop section with Karen Thomas, also from the UK coming third with a shot of aubergine.

And a close up of morning dew on pinot noir grapes in Sonoma County, California, got American George Rose third in the Errazuriz Wine Photographer of the Year – Produce category.

But the overall competition winner was Noor Ahmed Gelal from Bangladesh with an overhead shot looking down on Hindus preparing to break a day long fast in one of the local temples at Swamibag, Dhaka.

He bagged the £5,000 prize handed over by Pink Lady® UK head Andy Macdonald, who said: "The competition was fierce and the standard was exceptional.

"Noor's shot stood out from the rest in the way he made the subject matter so fascinating and distinctive.”