The stated point listed in the article was to prove that manual photography has merit and that ‘nothing is more fascinating than Mother Nature herself’, which he proved by winning the people’s choice award. He didn’t say the disqualification was inappropriate nor did he criticize the contest for inconsistent rules? It seems quite clear that he expected to be removed from the contest after making his statement, actually.

Personally I hope this doesn’t become a trend of machine generation and manually shot/created work spoiling each other’s contests.