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So the easiest tell for if something is a sensor/dust spot vs backscatter is that dust spots are typically black (maybe even shaped like a little hair lol) because they are blocking light from reaching the sensor. Backscatter is caused by light reflecting off particles so they will be light/white. Generally the dust spot thing is an issue for safari photographers changing lenses in the field and judges are way, way less forgiving to underwater photographers since they are expecting backscatter sneakiness.
I wouldn’t suggest entering the same image in two categories, OGPICOTY doesn’t explicitly state it in the rules, but theres a number of strategy reasons to not want the judges tired of the same images. (they also dont spell this out, but a single small team of editors culls down all the images first and the celebrity judges dont get to see everything, this small team can be fatigued from the same images over and over and may end up with both images cut instead of one making it through).
Sometimes the emerging categories can be cutthroat because contenders believe the competition will be lower, when in fact most of the time the winners there are already tippy top tier who only recently got interested in contests and thus meet the criteria and win handily.