To celebrate the release of Windows Live Essentials, there’s a joined Windows Live/Bing Photo Contest to highlight Windows Live Photo Gallery.
Photo Gallery is the best place on your PC to organize, edit and share your photos and videos with friends and family and social networks in the cloud. With that in mind, we’re looking for some breathtaking and stunning photos of clouds! We are looking for photos of clouds that somehow illustrate and show how Windows Live connects your PC to the cloud – but in a creative way of course! We then want to put one lucky winner’s photo of clouds on the homepage of Bing for the day! So send in your photos of clouds or anything that relates to clouds – rainbows, thunderclouds, airplanes, orographic clouds, etc. You can take pictures of landscapes, cities, objects, and just about anything so long as clouds are the primary focus of the image.
When taking your photo, you should think about how the photo can draw people in as a starting place for exploring Bing. It should strive for subtlety and poetry. For example, if the photo was taken on a day of celebration, you shouldn’t have to know that it’s Halloween, Columbus Day, or Mother’s Day to enjoy the photo.
A panel of judges will review all eligible photographs and select winners. 10 winners will be selected to have their photo featured in a Windows 7 Theme Pack to be featured in the Personalization Gallery. The grand prize will be selected that will have their photo featured on the Bing homepage US-English homepage on November 8th, 2010. The winning photographer will be given credit for the photo.
This Contest starts at 9:00 a.m. PT October 1, 2010 and ends at 11:59 p.m. PT on Friday October 22, 2010 ("Entry Period"). You are eligible to enter this contest if you are a legal resident of the 50 United States (includes District of Columbia) and are 16 years of age or older at the time of submission. Why they made this one US only is beyond me…
More info and requirements can be found on the Windows Experience Blog and in the Windows Live and Bing Photo Contest Official Rules.