Happy World Photo Day! Share your best photo from the past year with the world

posted Friday, August 19, 2016 at 11:30 AM EST

Happy World Photo Day, photographers! The annual event, which aims to inspire photographers of all skill levels to share their world with everyone else, happens today because August 19, 1839 is when the French government purchased the patent for the Daguerreotype and shared it with everyone as a gift "free to the world." Started in 2009 and celebrated for the first time in August of 2010, the World Photo Day project has come a long way and become a very popular project, with a list of partners including Zenfolio this year and Olympus, Bing and Envato in previous years.

Per the folks behind World Photo Day, there are "an estimated four billion cameras being used around the world," over three and a half billion of which are smartphones. It has never been easier to capture and share your images with friends, family and strangers in all areas on the globe.

If you use one of those four billion cameras, you can participate in World Photo Day! All you have to do is pick out your single best image from the past year, register for the World Photo Day Gallery and upload your image. To view the gallery of photographs yours will be joining, click here. You can view prior years' galleries here.