Photographer Miles Astrey was stripped of an award at the 1839 Awards, where his photo took third place and won the audience favorite in the AI photography category. It turned out that AI has nothing to do with creating a photo, informs Forbes.
His picture of a flamingo, resembling a pink ball of fluff on thin legs without a head, was taken in Aruba in 2022 with a regular camera without any artificial intelligence. To create the shot, Astray got up at five in the morning to get to the flamingo beach before the tourists arrived. The image, dubbed “Flamingone,” was the first ever to win in the AI category.
The 1839 Awards competition covers various categories, including animals, architecture, landscapes, portraits, photojournalism and still lifes. Astray submitted the image to the AI section to emphasize that art created by humans does not lose its power even in the age of algorithms.
This year’s judging panel included experts from the New York Times, Getty Images, the Maddox Gallery and the Pompidou Center. Immediately after the announcement of the winners, Astray himself announced that the photo was taken with a Nikon D750 DSLR camera, processed in Lightroom from RAW to JPG with minimal editing.
“I hardly edit my photos – except for a little correction of what the camera did not convey truthfully. I like to show the world as it is”, – Astray explained.
The co-founder and director of the competition, Lily Firman, commented on the decision of the organizers:
“We believe that this is an important, relevant and appropriate gesture. However, after a long internal discussion, we have decided to disqualify the work from the AI category out of respect for the other participants.”
The photographer supported this decision, calling it “quite fair and correct.”
