Appreciate Beauty of Nature with @phortun: round 18

Hi there my Hivean friends and followers!

Welcome to the 18th round of my special weekly photo challenge known as Appreciate Beauty of Nature with @phortun :)

I know a lot of photo contests with nature as the main theme were/are/will be hosted by various people on the Hive blockchain but I wanted to come up with something more than just another photo contest where participants would submit their best natural photos. Therefore, I decided to go for quite an unusual concept that I am going to introduce in the following lines.

The aim of the Appreciate Beauty of Nature with @phortun photo challenge is not to make you dig up your photo archives and submit the best pictures of nature that you have ever taken. Instead, I want you guys go out and appreciate the beauty of our nature right now.

The internet (and the Hive blockchain as well) is flooded with picture perfect shots of landscapes, mountains, forests, beaches etc. taken years ago. But this is not what I want to see in this challenge. I want to see shots that may not be necessarily stunning but they must be fresh, proving that you have just physically spent some time outdoors in the fresh air. But remember that nature comes in many forms. It doesn´t have to be a pristine jungle or a deep remote forest. An urban park, a botanical garden, a little grove on the outskirts of your town - pretty much any place with some trees, plants, rocks, bodies of water or any other natural features would be just as fine ;)

Obviously, there is no way for me to verify whether the photo that you submit in the challenge is really fresh or if it was even taken by you so I am relying on your honesty guys. The prizes for the winners (as described below) are more symbolical than overly motivating so I don´t expect too much fraudulent behavior in this challenge anyway.

I want to keep the rules of this challenge as simple and benevolent as possible so let´s agree on just this:

Only one entry per person per round.

The photo must be yours and not older than one week.

Add a few words about the photo, at least where and when you took it.

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You can start submitting your entries to this round from now until the next round. Prior to publishing the next round post, I will pick 3 winners, give my full upvote on their entries and feature them in the next round of the challenge. As long as the response is not too overwhelming, I will also try to give some smaller upvotes on all of the other entries to reward all participants.

I might change the concept and/or the rules of the photo challenge later on, depending on how things go. Also, I haven´t reserved a fixed day for this challenge yet so it might be movable but it will definitely be hosted once every week.

To keep up with you guys, I submit my own fresh natural photo to every round´s post too :) Here is my contribution to start out this round.

Finally, I can share a fresh natural photo taken in my Czech homeland with you. Earlier this year, some very bleak estimates were made, predicting that the Czech Republic would experience what would be the worst drought in at least 500 years this summer but so far, we have been getting a decent amount of rain so the landscape is still fresh and green. I hope it stays that way. Photo taken by me in a rural part of the Silesian Region two days ago.

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In the last round, we had 9 participants. After some thorough consideration, I decided to pick these 3 winners:

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@pardinus with this entry:

I can finally post a fresh picture in your contest! This one was taken yesterday, still smells like ocean breeze. SW alentejo, with its beautiful beaches, and coastline filled with cliffs and the typical mediterranean flora; the smell of gum rockroses is everywhere!

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@ssygmr with this entry:

Under the name of normalization process, we can now go out on weekends. This photo was taken at a place we call bird paradise. Actually there are flamingos in photo. But quite far. :) Drinking beer in this view is really enjoyable :) This photo was taken in Izmir Bird Paradise (Turkey) last weekend.

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@gabrielatravels with this entry:

Lucky me I finally managed to reconnect with nature after the restrictions have been lowered after almost 3 months! Four days ago I took my new phone and ran away to the wilderness of the woods and enjoy more of what I've missed for so long - so here we go with one of my first pictures taken with my new phone. Love the long exposure so far! 😅 Picture taken on 6th June, on 30 km away from Sibiu on a place called Cheile Avrigului.

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Congratulations guys! It was my pleasure to give you 100% upvotes on your entries :)

I am looking forward to what you will come up with in this round.

Have fun and appreciate the beauty of nature!

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This post was created by me for the Hive blockchain exclusively. All rights reserved.

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Thank you for visiting my blog. If you like posts about Nature, Animals, Ecology, Crypto, Traveling, Photography and discovering secrets and beauties of the World, feel free to follow me as these are the topics I mostly write about. Have a wonderful day and keep on hiving! :)