The stated point listed in the article was to prove that manual photography has merit and that ‘nothing is more fascinating than Mother Nature herself’, which he proved by winning the people’s choice award. He didn’t say the disqualification was inappropriate nor did he criticize the contest for inconsistent rules? It seems quite clear that he expected to be removed from the contest after making his statement, actually.
Personally I hope this doesn’t become a trend of machine generation and manually shot/created work spoiling each other’s contests.
So, does that mean that AI photos have merit when they win photo competitions, as has happened in the past? Seems like the point he was trying to make would go both ways.
Sure, AI photos have their merit. I believe manual and ai generated photos are their own categories and can be appreciated seperately as such.
Why limit AI photos to being a clone of real photos? Push expression of the subconscious, the psychedelic, the eldritch, etc. Make something creatively unique from the photoreal, something manual photos would struggle to recreate.
