The Earth Day Photo Contest didn’t end on April 22. Oh, no. Participants continued redeeming DonorsChoose.org codes to support public schools, we had a blast hosting the four division winners here in Redmond and because you asked, we created a Win 7 Theme Pack with all photos from the 12 finalists.
We just got the numbers in and we’re thrilled to report that contest participants made donations totaling more than $110K towards classroom projects on DonorsChoose.org. People requested and redeemed the $5 donation codes that Bing provided during the final round of voting, impacting nearly 12,000 classroom projects across the country and more than 311,000 students. Better yet, many of them gave further still, lifting the total donation amount to nearly $140,000.
In late May, the four contest division winners flew in from across the country to take part in an editorial team meeting, picking photos for our July and August homepages. We also showed them around Microsoft, took them to our very own Seattle Sounders team practice and visited the Seattle Seahawks state-of-the-art practice facility.
In the meeting room The Winners and family
Taking in the Sounders Practice Running the Seahawks practice field
Spencer Costanzo, who won the 14-17 age division with his photo of a Puerto Rican Iguana, is also the president of the Princeton High School photography club. The school, which received the digital photo lab as part of Spencer’s prize, is letting the club have the equipment and currently finding space to house it all. You can see more photos by Spencer on his own site.
The winner of the 11-13 age division, Stephen Sollod, goes to Hommocks Middle School and the school’s prize will be housed in the school’s art studio. You can read more about the school and Stephen’s win on his District E-Newsletter.
Jordan Craven won in the 5 – 10 age division with her photo of a whale. She took the photo with a Cannon Powershot s3 off the coast of Maui, HI on a whale watching day trip.
Alan Bosse won in the 18+ division and the grand prize – his photograph on the Bing homepage! You can read about his win here.
Now you can enjoy all 12 finalists photos every day on your desktop. Go here to download the Windows 7 Theme Pack. To download the other Bing’s Best themes, you can download them (along with other themes, wallpapers and gadgets) from the Windows Personalization Gallery.
Stephanie Horstmanshof
Managing Editor
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Other posts of interest:
The Bee is all the Buzz at Bing
The Bing Student Earth Day Photo Contest Finalists