Landscape Photographer of the Year Winner Disqualified

[Mike Farley]

According to the LPOTY website, David Byrne has had three of his four winning images disqualified for breaching the rules. The one which now remains is of Rugely power station which he entered in the one category where manipluation is allowed, yet he has denied that he did anything major despite no one else being able to get close to replicating the shot. Very strange. At least Byrne has accepted his disqualification with good grace. It should also be said that he has only been in photography for a short while and perhaps did not fully realise that he is a creative rather than landscape photographer. It sure explains why his shots are so good!

It is all very embarassing for the organisers, who have published a book which contains all four images. Given that there have been controversies in previous years and the rules in three of the categories are explicit about being true to the original scene, you would have thought that they would have asked shortlisted entrants to submit the original Raw files as occurs with nature competitions.