Crabgate!

So the winners have been announced for Landscape Photographer of the Year and there are some extremely competent and stunning images in the book and exhibition.

On a personal note I was very happy to be shortlisted for this and this - but they didn't make the final cut.

Looking at the winners I was surprised to see this image as one of the finalists:

Hermit Crab by Brian Griifiths

My initial reaction was that it owed more to Photoshop than nature. it seems that I wasn't alone in this assumption as photography forums exploded in a series of discussions about it. My favourite is the dissection by Tim Parkin on Flckr.

I am naive enough to feel that a landscape photograph should be a representation of the scene at the time and not just be the basis for freestyling in photoshop. My opinions don't really matter, but how this got to a final in a competition where one of the rules is:

The integrity of the image must be maintained and the making of physical changes to the landscape is not permitted (removing fences, moving trees, stripping in sky from another image etc). The organisers reserve the right to disqualify any image that they feel lacks authenticity due to over-manipulation.

,is beyond me!

There are an awful lot of great shots in the competition, so I hope this doesn't detract from the award and exhibition. I would love to hear your opinion, should this shot have been a winner ?