10 hours ago, John Liddiard said:

That would eliminate most high spec cameras, where automated subject selection tracking could be classified as AI.

Even my E-PL5 uses some (simple) AI for face recognition. Subject tracking is for sure AI-supported in almost all cameras. But I don't think the intention was to exclude all AF-C images.

1 hour ago, RichN said:

SO for a conversational piece, your direct input on this document as a skeleton rule set for future Waterpixel use, I am interested in hearing.

Like @Klaus I find this document a really good base ... I like it

Realizing many of the folks on this forum are very serious about everything they do I hardly see $5.00 as an impediment to entering a for the fun of it contest to support the site. Cap the entries to five photos and just charge a $20 entry fee.

Or charge enough to enter that it would include a choice of a ball cap or a tee shirt.

And if I or some of the less serious guys entered, uh, for the purpose of supporting the site, promise not to laugh, at least to our faces!

Or a sticker for my camera case, "I am not a Professional, but I did enter a Water Pixels contest and they laughed" or something!

Edited Tuesday at 11:40 PM4 days by Nemrod

I am not particularly enamored of the categories since they seem to cater to tropical locations, but that seems to be the focus here.

Likewise I'd rather allow not fixing of composition errors such as removing backscatter but that's just me. Perhaps I just dislike post-processing and would rather take better pictures?

2 hours ago, Grantmac said:

Perhaps I just dislike post-processing and would rather take better pictures?

Me too but sometimes there is no other options (i'm probably not good enough to avoid post-processing ;) )

Might be kind of fun to have categories on the opposite ends of the spectrum - an untouched raw file category and an anything goes category to see what people are up to with AI.

Maybe those would be better as a forum post so there's no entry fee for it though!

I don't really enter competitions, because I know the outcome 😂, but I'd probably enter something like this to support the site - great idea!

I don't know that I'd actually enter as I'm a more for self-amusement photo taker, but who knows, maybe.

But I'm definitely in the zero generative AI slop camp, for multiple reasons. And I think that most of us understand the difference between removing some specks in the water, a bit of crop and the type of AI slop we are talking about being against.