In celebration of World Photography Day, WordPress’ Photo Directory team has issued a challenge designed to get people contributing:

Submit a photo that captures something unique about your local area, in a way that helps represent the geographic diversity of the WordPress community.

Since its launch, the WordPress Photo Directory has grown to 3,633 free, CC0-licensed photos. The purpose of this challenge is to raise awareness of the directory project and encourage people to contribute photos to expand the collection.

Photo contributors are encouraged to submit an original image of something from their local area (neighborhood, town, city, or country), such as a landscape, street, local wildlife, nature, or a landmark. In addition to following the directory guidelines, participants should also add the following information to denote their work as part of this initiative:

• (1) The location or where the image was taken (e.g. the city and/or country)
• (2) The word WorldPhotographyDay22

Photo Directory team contributor Marco Almeida has an additional recommendation for well-known locations that have an English counterpart for the name in the original language:

Quick suggestion for submissions: if you’re uploading a photo that has regional interest and the name of the place is not the same in English and the local language, do repeat the photo description in both languages. For example: “Walking on Lisbon’s sidewalk – A andar na calçada de Lisboa”. This will ensure the photo is both searchable by “Lisbon” and “Lisboa”.

Submitted photos that are approved may be featured across WordPress.org’s social media channels. Photo contributors will also get a contributor badge on their WordPress.org profiles, which I was surprised to find on mine after contributing a picture of my morning oatmeal a few months ago.

Participants can submit up to five photos at a time but will have to wait until those pass through review before submitting more. If your photo is approved, the Photo Directory team requests you leave a comment on the challenge post with the link to the photo and the story behind it.

More specific instructions for submitting photos are available in the announcement. If you are a photography enthusiast, this challenge is a great opportunity to give back to the world of free WordPress resources. The challenge will conclude on August 28, 2022.