Lucky Sydney resident Jeremy Somers* was selected the winner of a global photography competition from over 10,000 photographs selected worldwide. The 'Summer-themed' photo competition drew over 13,206 unique ratings through Facebook, where it was voted on by US Bing judges.
The winning Somers shot depicted an incredible bolt of lightning striking just beyond the base of Sydney Tower during a fierce summer storm.
Somers got in position to watch the storm from his grandmother's apartment building, taking over 700 shots of the storm, which lasted almost 4 hours.
The Facebook-run competition was sponsored by Bing, in a worldwide search for an image that would help sell the new search engine. Google is already well known for their unique pictorial representations of their brand word - though Bing went one step further by adopting an entire image to become the face of their identity.
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| The winning Bing search image by Jeremy Sothers |
Somers 'lucky strike' photo will appear on Microsoft's new Bing search portal in sites across the US, Australia and Europe from August 3rd.
Things are heating up Bing lately. Microsoft recently announced a partnership with Yahoo for their search engine placement, in attempts to strangle off competition from Google. It's hoped that Bing will provide the market with more than one major search engine alternative.
Check out Somers website for more photos.
*Spelling of name has been changed in article*