My Blogger Redux: Volume 2

Last year, for the MS Giving Campaign, some enterprising photographers thought it would be a great idea to try to raise money for United Way by selling a book of photos by MS employees. (There are a plethora of really talented photographers at work.) Due to limited space in the book, only 75% of the people that submitted pictures made the cut. I was really happy to get published! It turned out that the book became the #2 fundraiser during the giving campaign, raising tens of thousands of dollars—a pretty impressive feat, and got a lot of good press coverage.

This year’s book organizers wanted to one-up last year’s book (it was a different organizing committee). Last year’s book was printed on-demand by Blurb, and was kind of expensive and quality was ‘ok’. This year’s book was going to be a *real* book printed with the traditional offset printing model, with an actual ISBN, and will be sold in retail outlets like Barnes & Noble.

Anyhow, like last year, this year I submitted five pictures for inclusion. My collection of photos to choose from were more limited this year due to a decrease of picture-taking, but I eventually picked five pictures (at practically the last minute).

In mid-July I got an e-mail:

Subject: MS Photo Book Selection Decision

The results of the judging for this year’s edition of the Microsoft Photo Book are in: I’m sorry to inform you that your photos were not chosen for inclusion. ...

Boo. I didn’t read much after that first line. I was completely disheartened. The book looked really nice though:

You can preview a handful of pictures from the book here.

Last week I got an email:

Subject: Photographers@Microsoft is on its way!

Congratulations Richard! You are now a “published” photographer! Thousands of copies of Photographers@Microsoft Volume 2 are now en route for shipment. As you may know, your photo “Twilight” was included in the book. Competition in this year’s book was strong and only ten percent of submissions were included, so this is something to be proud of.

I was like, “WTF?!” No, I didn’t know! Did they mess up this e-mail? I looked at the cover, and indeed, my picture was there! I was elated! This is the picture that made the book, entitled “Twilight”, from my camping trip to the Enchantments. I actually didn’t think it was that great of a picture, but I was out of good pictures to pick and Holly convinced me to submit this one.

Twilight

Tonight, I made my way to someone’s office to sign (autograph!) a couple copies of the book and to take a look at the book. It’s really well done (though I don’t care for the font they used to caption the pictures). The paper is *really* high quality (thick paper!) and the binding and cover is really sturdy. I can’t wait to buy a copy (available for just $49.95, half of which goes to United Way)!

Page 49!