Competition Controversy

When the 2021 International Landscape Photographer of the Year (ILPOTY) awards were announced in early 2022, the internet had a meltdown. Purists denounced the contest winners as “digital artists”, while others countered by expounding on the shortcomings of camera technology, and how in some cases, the edits were necessary to improve the image quality. One of the winners, Chris Byrnes, even went so far as to post a before and after with his Raw image to defend his image. His winning image was almost straight out of the camera.
When I shared the news on my other social media channels I said how little editing was done on my recently awarded image. Which I was proud of since ILPOTY has so many heavy handed edits and composites in the Top 101. So here’s the before & after. I moved 5 sliders in Lightroom pic.twitter.com/YWgtYM4YLZ
— Chris Byrne (@ChrisByrnePhoto) February 8, 2022