FAIR PLAY · VERIFIED AT CAPTURE
Photos you can't fake
Every PeakShot entry is provably taken from the same spot, under the same pressure, with the same tools. Here is how we keep the podium honest — in plain language.
Photo zone
10 m
GPS-verified square
Shot window
5:00
same clock for everyone
Frames
3 max
in-app camera only
Fingerprint
SHA-256
sealed at capture
THE LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
Same spot. Same pressure. Same tools.
Most photo competitions compare photographers' circumstances: who owns the better glass, who could wait longest for the light, who edits hardest. PeakShot removes the circumstances so only the photographer is left.
SAME SPOT
GPS-verified zones
Every Photo Zone is a 10-metre square on a real fell. Your entry only exists if you stood inside it, on foot, with a live GPS fix. Nobody shoots the view from a lay-by, a drone, or someone else's summit.
SAME PRESSURE
A five-minute window
When a zone arms, everyone gets the same shot clock: five minutes, up to three frames. No returning at your leisure, no waiting a week for perfect light on a tripod you left overnight. The clock is the great equaliser.
SAME TOOLS
In-app camera only
Entries come from the PeakShot camera and nowhere else. No gallery uploads, no imports, no round-trips through Photoshop or an AI generator. What the sensor saw in that window is what the judges see.
EVIDENCE, NOT TRUST
Every frame accounts for itself
You never have to take another member's word for it, and they never have to take yours. The proof is built into the photograph.
01
Fingerprinted at the moment of capture
The instant you press the shutter, each frame is hashed (SHA-256) on your device — before it is stored, before it syncs, before anyone could touch it. That fingerprint travels with the photo forever. If a single pixel changes afterwards, the fingerprint no longer matches and the entry is void. Editing after the fact is not against the rules so much as mathematically impossible.
02
A real walk looks like a real walk
Your GPS track is part of your entry. A genuine ascent has a shape: human pace, ascent that matches the terrain, a coherent line from the start geofence to the zone and back. Tracks that could not have been walked by a person on that hill do not produce eligible entries. We check plausibility, not perfection — a dropped signal in a gully is normal; teleporting is not.
03
Winners are audited by a human
Before any result is announced, a person reviews the winning entries end to end: the GPS track, the capture record, the fingerprints, the photo itself. AI screening also flags suspected photos-of-screens and AI-generated images along the way. No podium place is published on the say-so of software alone.
ENFORCEMENT · IN THE OPEN
The rules of the rules
You should know exactly where you stand before you ever start a walk. These are the enforcement principles, stated openly.
01
Every entry is verified
Not a sample, not spot checks — every single entry passes the same verification before it can score.
02
Violations forfeit
An entry that fails verification is removed from the competition. No score, no leaderboard position, no appeal to “it was only a small edit”.
03
A clear ladder of consequences
Warning, then disqualification from the competition, then a season ban, then an account ban. Honest mistakes sit at the bottom of the ladder; deliberate, repeated cheating climbs it quickly.
04
An appeals route, always
Every enforcement decision can be appealed to a human, and the appeal is heard before any ban becomes final. Fair play cuts both ways — the process has to be fair to you too.
WHAT WE DON'T PUBLISH — AND WHY
We publish the principles, never the tripwires
You will notice this page tells you what is checked, not how. That is deliberate. Publishing detection mechanics would hand cheats a manual for beating them, and every honest member would pay the price. So the principles above are a promise we make in the open; the specific tripwires stay private, they change without notice, and they are always stricter than the last person to test them expected. If you are playing honestly, none of this ever concerns you.
WHAT FAIR PLAY BUYS YOU
Your eye takes the podium
All of this machinery exists for one reason: so the competition is only ever about the photograph.
Gear doesn't buy the podium — everyone shoots the same view, from the same 10 msquare, on the same clock. Editing doesn't buy the podium — the frame is sealed the instant it is captured. What's left is the part no one can buy, fake, or download: where you chose to stand within the zone, when you pressed the shutter, and what you saw that nobody else did.
Gear doesn't win here. Editing doesn't win here. Your eye does.