Appreciate Beauty of Nature with @phortun: round 154

Hi there my Hivean friends and followers!

Welcome to the 154th 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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First of all, I would like to thank you guys for the significantly increased participation in the last two rounds of this challenge. It seems that my little rant about my regular series that I published here on my blog some two weeks ago was read and taken into consideration by many of you. I really appreciate it, thank you. Now back to my own shot to open this round. Winter with its characteristic features is still in full swing here in Central Europe so taking decent natural photos is quite difficult (unless you go to the mountains like @onlavu, one of our last round´s winners whose amazing picture you can see below) but I did my best again, trying a new location this time as I headed out to a forest in the Motol neighborhood of Prague, Czech Republic two days ago. It was there where I captured this low angle close up. The white ice crystals contrasting with the green moss probably was the most interesting sight I got to find there.

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In the last round, we had 12 participants. After some thorough consideration, I decided to pick these 3 winners:

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@onlavu with this entry from the Czech Republic:

Spruce trees covered by icy snow and shaped by strong wind. Meet the strong trees of the Red Mountain (1,333 m), one of the summits of the Jeseniky Mountains in Czechia. Captured last Sunday.

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@roronoa46 with this entry from Indonesia:

Hi @phortun, here is my entry for this contest, I hope you can accept it. This photo I took on 2023-01-26 in my backyard in Indonesia. This creature looks so beautiful even without me editing a bit, it's an original photo taken using a smartphone camera with the help of a 100mm macro lens and it's the only picture I got for this sweet little dragonfly. Thank you for this contest and happy weekend to you.

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@franzpaulie with this entry from the Philippines:

Congrats to all the winners and here's my entry! I went out this afternoon and hiked around the Twin Lakes. The trail is approximately 900 meters. There's so much to observe here like stick insects, butterflies, and especially their own native birds that inhabited the lakes and its surrounding forest, rock formations also are stunning. This nature has lots to offer that it took me almost two hours to complete the trek. The Twin lakes, San Jose, Negros Oriental, Philippines is the exact location.

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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! :)