Oh the woes of the Digital age
http://www.timparkin.co.uk/2012/10/landscape-photographer-of-the-year-2/Both sadly and correctly, David Byrne has been disqualified from the competition. We have no more information than what that means. He states
“I have to inform you after a conversation with Charlie Waite I have been disqualified from the Landscape Photographer of the year awards, unfortunately I didn’t read the regulations and certain editing like adding clouds and cloning out small details are not allowed, while I don’t think what I have done to the photo is wrong in any way, I do understand it’s against the regulations so accept the decision whole heartily. I have never passed off my photographs as record shots and the only reason this has come about has been due to my openness about how and what I do to my images. The changes I made were not major and if you go to the locations you will see everything is there as presented”Now regardless of what we think about the level of manipulation admitted to I think we should let David Byrne be now – he made a mistake that was allowed to creep all the way through to the finals and he should not be persecuted for that. I left a message on the forum saying.
“Really sorry this has happened and I wanted to reiterate that the blog post I wrote about the competition was not intended to attack you personally but to try to point out that three out of the four images that were entered were not compatible with the terms and conditions. I do feel truly sorry that you had to suffer for this because all of this could have been avoided if the competition organisers could have checked things thoroughly.
I should add that your images are very strong and whilst I don’t think they are the best landscape photographs I have seen – they are certainly very good and this situation should not make you think differently.
Don’t forget that if the images had been compatible with the terms and conditions they would still have won, they can’t take that away from you.
My personal favourite is the Delamere forest – a very nice, original image.
I really hope this doesn’t stop your enjoyment of photography and I’m sure you’ll get lots of support from the forum here.”The forum thread has, rightly or wrongly, been deleted.
We should applaud the organisers for making the right decision and also David for accepting it.
No related posts.