In 2025, a spontaneous initiative emerged from the WordPress Community: a photo contest. The idea was to encourage contributions to the WordPress Photo Directory with pictures related to summer. And it worked! There were many people participating and sharing their images.
A year later, I wanted to bring it back to give a little visibility to one of my favorite WordPress Community projects.
The WordPress Photo Directory
In case you don’t even know what I’m talking about, let me sum things up.
Inside the WordPress project, there’s a place to release your photos into the public domain for the benefit of all: the WordPress Photo directory.
The thing works like this: you submit your photos, they become part of a public directory under a CC0 license, and anyone anywhere can use them completely freely, for any purpose, and without having to provide attribution.
Others can use your photos, but you can also use the 40,000+ photos others have already shared. Yep, FORTY THOUSAND. All of them are free to use for whatever you want.
Nice, huh?
The Summer Photo Contest
People in the WordPress Community are often willing to make cool things. And last summer some contributors got together to organize a themed photo contest: the first WordPress Summer Photo Contest.
I not only decided to participate, but I also managed to take third place.
Yay! 🎉
There were some fantastic photos, both the winning entries and all the others that were submitted. And as I looked through them, I thought:
What stories lie behind them? What was happening at the moment they were taken?
That’s, for me, one of the things I like most about the WordPress Photo Directory. As they are pictures with no professional purpose, just images random people want to share, I imagine that the photographers were in the middle of something when they decided to capture the photo.
For example, my third-place photo. I didn’t take it in 2025. It was back in 2009, on my first trip to Euskadi. It was the first trip I paid for with my own money. And I had a Canon 1000D that I carried around with me everywhere. Photography was important in my life back then. It helped me find light and beauty in everyday moments and, in this way, have a brighter and more positive perspective on life.
Like, don’t you think all those people look like confetti scattered across the beach?
So, next time you visit the WordPress Photo directory, I encourage you to not only look for pictures to use, but also stories to imagine. Because there are many.
And, what about this summer?
This summer has been hard in Spain.
I really miss autumn.
I also miss spring.
Meanwhile, if you are in the Northern Hemisphere, remember to stay hydrated
and cool.
Love,
Nora.
PS. You don’t need to attribute the photos, but it’s always a nice thing to do.
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