Note, however, that this is an ART competition and not a regular PHOTO competition.
If you look at some of the past winners, they are not the typical sort of photos that win photography contests. In fact, many of my photography friends could not accept last year's winning entry because they felt it was not a good photograph, let alone a great photograph.
It was a photo of an old wall with old wall paper, peeling off at the sides, that shows a forest.
Since it was taken indoors, lighting was not great.
Since it was a wall, it was mostly two-dimentional, no depth of field.
Since it was a wall, it had no "decisive moment".
etc etc.
But the judges -- mostly artists, including ex-head of La Salle plus one photographer-turned artist (forgot his name, he is the guy who runs art gallery at MITA House, made the news when Garman did not allow him to display a huge nude painting) -- deemed this to be a great piece of photographic art, worthy of the $8,000 top prize (which has now been raised to $10,000).
Hard to say what makes photography art. Harder to predict how the judges decide on this.