I am curious at the judging criteria. I prefer gritty environments where men do men things.
Much of my favorite photographic art is in black-and-white. Pumping Iron, the book, was in black and white, and did not lose anything from it.
The male space is largely expressible using the medium of black and white photography. Structure, work, engineering, and such has a certain feel about it that black and white photos bring out so well.
One example of this is the brutalism architecture O so popular during the 1960's and 1970's. I don't really like dehumanizing Judge Dredd-style architecture, but black and white photos expressed it so well.
So ephemeral are some scenes that it does us well to remember them, and savor the experience via photos and videos later, as it reawakens some of the joys and frustrations of the thing in which we were privileged to be.
I just like dirty, gritty man spaces. Old-school gyms with 8' blinkmaster 6000 fluorescent lights, dark alleys in 3rd world countries, mechanics' garages, places that are dark and potentially dangerous, especially for the uninitiated. I walk through neighborhoods in the night that local people would not drive through during the day.
Some places, some people just do not belong, and there is a certain solitary beauty about them. The places. Not the people so described.
Often, places where things are actually being accomplished are not neat, tidy, spaces, to the unfamiliar eye. Therein lies the beauty of said spaces and scenes, not in the lasting image or video, but in what we felt to actually BE there in the first place.