№ 03 · The journal
Filed under comedy-wildlife. All entries →
Comedy Wildlife is free, enormous, and the most authenticity-strict contest most photographers never think of as strict. The whole genre depends on the moment being real — caught, not constructed — which makes its rules tighter than the laughs suggest. A close read of what this jury rewards, where the biological-fidelity line sits, and the check to run before the 30 June deadline.
In three weeks this spring, three photography contests pulled images for AI — Tokina, an aurora-lit owl, and a Hasselblad Masters finalist. In the same three weeks, the detection layer that catches them went mainstream: Canon shipped authenticity at capture, OpenAI and Google shipped watermark verification. The scandal wave and the detection wave are the same story. A close read of what changed, and what every contest's AI clause now means for the photographer about to enter one.