Someone I know used to be a fairly serious amateur photographer back in the film days. Did a lot of bird photos among other nature-related things. He pretty much got out of the camera club and photo contest scene a number of years back because, once digital scanning and then digital cameras became a widespread thing, most of the winning photos were increasingly "faked" in various ways.
This piece in Outside Magazine in 2009 describes the beginning of this sort of things. https://www.outsideonline.com/1825491/photo-lying-you