New members will still require manual approval, but existing members have shown that they're not bots, and are responsible with their online activities. This is a community site where ideas are quickly implemented, tested, and released. Our member count continues to increase, which I'm happy about. There was a slight glitch yesterday with uploads of a certain dimension causing an error message. I think I've gotten that worked out.
There still is an automatic check run on photographs that could still get your photo sent for review. It's likely not that there's an issue with your photo but that these systems get things wrong. It happens a lot with camera scanning because of the digital nature of it. Nothing wrong with camera scanning but sometimes the system still wants me to approve the photo.
-Ken