14 DAY TRIAL // Voting is now opened on the entries from a dozen finalists of Bing’s Earth Day Photo Contest for Students. Users can head to the official Earth Day Photo Contest website, and choose their favorite images out of the 12 displayed on this page. There are three pictures per category, and a total of four categories, in accordance with different age groups: ages 5-10, 11-13, 14-17, and 18+. Stephanie Horstmanshof, a member the Bing Homepage team, revealed that approximately 17,000 had been submitted for the contest. Only 12 were selected as the finalist entries, with votes from users left to determine the winners in each of the four age categories.
“Vote for your favorite photo now and you can help a school project of your choice through DonorsChoose.org. That’s right, Bing is giving out DonorsChoose.org GivingCards worth $5.00 each from April 13th to April 19th. You can use these cards to donate towards a classroom project of your choice. Projects include new art supplies, helping to fund a school field trip, even environmental school projects. We’re giving these $5.00 DonorsChoose.org GivingCard to the first 20,000 people who vote each day. That means that every day from April 13th to April 19th you have another opportunity to vote in the contest and receive an additional GivingCard,” Horstmanshof stated.
Microsoft plans to offer a single GivingCard per day per user between April 13-19, 2010. According to the Redmond company, the GivingCards can be used exclusively at DonorsChoose.org and are set to expire on May 20, 2010. In addition to the cards, Microsoft will also offer prizes to the finalists as well as their schools. Horstmanshof also underlined that the Redmond company would fly division winners to Redmond, where they would help decide on the imagery that would appear as backgrounds on the Bing homepage. As far as the grand prize winner of the contest is concerned, the no. 1 position will also ensure that the associated photo will be featured on the Bing homepage on Earth Day, April 22.
“You can view and vote on all 12 stunning Earth Day themed finalists on the contest site. Subjects range from coral to glaciers, even blue-footed boobies. If you want to check out the competition, use our Visual Search gallery to search through some of the top entries, filter by school, school state, theme and other criteria. We were really excited to see that photos came from around the US, from Florida to California and everywhere in between,” Horstmanshof added.