Appreciate Beauty of Nature with @phortun: round 126

Hi there my Hivean friends and followers!

Welcome to the 126th 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 to 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 (photo) 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 in the comment section below 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. I usually host the challenge on Thursday but when needed for some reason, I can host it on some other day so better check my blog regularly not to miss out on it ;)

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:

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Lately, I have been hiking a lot around the beautiful Prokop Valley here in Prague, Czech Republic and it was during one of my recent hikes over there last Saturday when I took this close up picture of what I believe is the Red Admiral. This handsome fella was just basking in the afternoon sun on the upper rocky edge of the valley and he didn´t really care much about me and my camera so I could take this photo from a relatively short distance. I actually took a lot of panoramic pictures of the valley from the edge too and you can definitely expect them to show up in some of my future posts.

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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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@brittandjosie with this entry from the Netherlands:

This is my contribution, I could have done the bumblebee or the hedgehog that I also captured this week but this momma and her calf (thickbackcows) are this week´s entry. Location: the cow fields in Rotterdam, Holland.

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@friendlymoose with this entry from the Netherlands:

Very nice submissions again! And also a nice snail @phortun. My contribution for this week is this lovely bright pink coloured dahlia in my backyard in the Netherlands, I took this a few days ago. I bought and planted a 'bees and butterflies' mix in spring which results in beautiful flowers.

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@bloghound with this entry from the Philippines:

Hello and good evening from the Philippines @phortun my friend. It's ironic I came across here through @friendlymoose's post and fortunately earlier this afternoon just about when the rain pours, I saw one butterfly who kept roaming around my Red Hardy plant. And to be honest, I am a huge fan of butterflies since I was a kid. I think this tiny friend wanted to get noticed. Too magnificent not to. Please wave hello. Photo taken using my Canon EOS 2000d on July 12, 2022. Thank you!

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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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I post this series in the Amazing Nature community, a great community for all nature lovers. Feel free to check it out ;)

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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, Sport, 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, guys! :)