These are tough questions that ultimately end up with vague or "odd" guidlines.

It's interesting becuase preserving the medium is not only a an issue in photography. I follow bicycle racing. You'd think defining a bike would be straight forward. But what defines a bike from a human powered vehicle (HPV)? All of a sudden it's not so simple. The world governing body struggles with this each year.

Someone brought up motor racing. The governing bodies here set up strict guidlines and rules for each series. If not, the best and highest budget teams would be winning by a larger margin than they are now.

With photography, when is an photograph, painting with light, a photograph instead of a pure graphical representaion? In other words, when does the final image have nothing to do with the original and becomes an animea? Some would argue there isn't a difference. Then, should we accept images that the person didn't even take? In old fashioned terms, would a painting be allowed in a photo contest?

I'm not against optimization. Let's face it, it's been done since day one. Check out ansel adams prints made from his negatives verses one he made. HUGE difference. But the best editing in the world won't fix a poor compositon. The exception may be if it was converted in software to something hardly reckognizable from the original.

It aslo sound to me like your club needs to screen judges better, or give them guidlines like composition, presentation etc. At the club level, most people want to learn and get better. A judge that could articulated well is what they want. A good composition is a just that, irregardless of colors. Still, you'll always end up with a flaky judge that will rate on instant impact. Thus, bright bold image will win that month. All in all, take it with a grain of salt and move on.

And as Steve points out, all contests have problems. At the local level I've always noticed that there is an "in" club and their photos end up on the top. Even in our club, I'm convinced the club president, who finds or interviews most of the judges, ends up with a few extra points because of it. If you've gone to many photography web sites, I'm sure you noticed that a popular person will always get kudo's even when they show mediocre work.

This is a tough issue without straight forward answers.