For me, one of the best parts of working at Culture is when, as a group, we review images that come in from the various photo shoot assignments. We collectively go through them and decide which ones will work best with the editorial and layouts.

As you can imagine, the decision making process is often challenging as there is only so much "print real estate" available and inevitably there's never enough room to include all the ones we want.

Given a singular common denominator of cheese, there's an amazing spectrum of subject matter contained within the many hundreds of pages printed over the last year. In no particular order, here are some of my personal favorites from 2012.

As a newcomer to the North Eastern US, I was excited to be part of the build-up surrounding of one of New England’s largest annual events and cheese competitions, The Big E.

The Big E – otherwise known as the Eastern States Exposition – takes place over a two week period near Springfield in Massachusetts, featuring a vast array of exhibits and shows ranging in theme from Agricultural and food related (including an area for New England Cheesemakers) through to a Circus, Equine competitions and rock concerts plus a whole lot more.

Late last year, the cheese competition organizer, Elena Hovagimian, contacted me to ask if I would like to be one of the judges. I readily accepted, pleased to have the chance to learn more about some of the best that New England has to offer.