PHOTO CONTEST INFORMATION

The Bing Photo Contest offers people the chance to have a photo they’ve taken be displayed as the official Bing homepage photo for a 24 hour period. This is a skill based contest. The winning photo will be selected by a combination of user ratings and evaluation by the Bing homepage editorial team for compliance with the home page photo guidelines.

The theme for this contest is “Summer Travel”, so photographers should strive to feature or evoke summer travel destinations or experiences.

Bing Photo Contest offers people the chance to have a photo they’ve taken be displayed as the official Bing homepage photo for a 24 hour period. This is a skill based contest. The winning photo will be selected by a combination of user ratings and evaluation by the Bing homepage editorial team for compliance with the home page photo guidelines.

The theme for this contest is “Summer Travel”, so photographers should strive to feature or evoke summer travel destinations or experiences.

Contest Schedule

Submissions and Round 1 Voting Starts

Monday, June 29

Last day of Submissions

Thursday, July 16

Last day of Round 1

Sunday, July 19

Semi-Final Round

Monday, July 20

Final Round of Voting Starts

Tuesday, July 21

Last day of Final Round

Sunday, July 26

Winner Announced

Monday, July 27

Winning Photo Featured

(to be announced)

Photo Guidelines

Thanks for your interest in getting your photo on the Bing home page. Before you submit, we’d like to tell you a bit about what we’re looking for.

In a Nutshell

• The image should make you want to find out more about it.
• The image should draw you in and be a starting place for exploring Bing
• The subject of the photo must provide enough interest to program all the content that we use to support that exploration.
• Strive for subtlety and poetry. You shouldn’t have to know that it’s Halloween, Columbus Day, or Boss’s Day to enjoy the photo.

All images that we consider must meet a number of requirements, so keep this in mind as you’re looking for photos to submit.

Subject matter

We strive to show new things every day, but we do have the following limits on subject matter:

• No recognizable people
• No 3rd party trademarks (e.g., Mickey Mouse ears)
• No objectionable content, such as alcohol, smoking, guns, violence, or nudity

File type, size, etc.

The raw image files that you submit need to meet the following requirements:

Format

JPEG only

Dimensions

Minimum of 970px width and 528px height.
Higher resolution is better. Note that we prefer to have the image submitted in its original size and aspect ratio, which will allow us the most flexibility when sizing and cropping to meet the needs of the home page. However if the aspect ratio is very different, the cropping used for the thumbnail may be sub-par. We do crop and edit images at our discretion to work within the constraints of the home page.

Orientation

Horizontal.

Resolution

At least 1MB.

Markup

No watermark, signature or photographer name can be included in the image file. The photographer credit will be added to the page separately.

Composition

The logo, search box, and explore pane need room to breathe. Images we use on the home page need to have the main focus away from that area of the frame, as shown below:

Judging Process

The competition has three rounds: two rounds of voting on Facebook and one round of selection by the Bing homepage editorial board. The ultimate winner is decided by a combination of popular rating in the first round, then editorial selection in the semi-final round, and popular vote in the final round.

Round 1 – Qualification and Elimination

During this round, any Facebook user may rate photos. Users are given a set of photos at random by the application for rating. Users may rate as many sets of photos as they wish. Ratings are only counted one per person per photo. Each set of photos is selected by the application so that all photos receive equal opportunity in the rating process to help eliminate bias.

Once photos receive 50 votes and an average score of at least 2.0, they qualify for the leaderboard and are ranked by average vote. The leaderboard is limited to the top 1000 photos based on rating. Photos which have an average score of less than 2.0 will be eliminated from the contest.

Round 2 – Semi-Final

After the first round of voting is finished, the Bing homepage editorial team will review the top photos on the leaderboard and select 8 photos for advancement to the Final round, proceeding in order of rank on the leaderboard with photos that are in compliance with the Contest Rules. If we do not receive a sufficient number of entries in compliance with the Contest Rules, we may, at our discretion, select fewer semi-finalists. Rank at the top of the leaderboard does not guarantee advancement into the Final round, but only the top-ranked photos will be considered. The top 8 photos not selected by the Bing homepage editorial team will remain on the leaderboard with Honorable Mentions.

Round 3 – Final

During this round, the photos selected by the Bing homepage editorial team will be presented on Facebook for a final round of voting by Facebook users to determine the contest winner. Facebook users will be invited to vote for one photo in this round and the photo that receives the most votes will be the contest winner.

Contest website: http://apps.facebook.com/bing_photo_contest/?_fb_fromhash=e1767b2c56d0363b5e36f31e5d9c5221&_fb_q=1

For voting follow the link http://apps.facebook.com/bing_photo_contest/vote_now?_fb_q=1