Hello,
A coincidence: last weekend, in Germany and the Netherlands both the winners of photo contests were made public. In Germany the Zedler Medaille jury gave no first and second prize, while in the Netherlands the competition Wiki loves monuments honoured quite a number of winners. (In English about the Dutch gathering: http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/2010/11/21/mini-conference-in-utrecht/ )
Maybe the Zedler criteria were not made clear enough to the participants, I don't know. In the Dutch case, I was stunned and positively impressed by the straight forward application of three simple criteria: the picture had to be clear (focused etc.), encyclopedic and beautiful.
The Dutch winner is this picture: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestand:Amsterdam_-_Vijzelstraat_27-35_%28halsg... It may not meet the requirements of a purely technically or esthetically oriented jury. But it has great encyclopedic value. It shows the monument, a 17th century building in Amsterdam, in its actual modern use. On the right, you see an old picture of how the building looked like earlier. The advertisement for light bulb and the gentlemen dressed in modern leisure related fashion fix the picture into our modern times.
Kind regards Ziko