Appreciate Beauty of Nature with @phortun: round 208

Hey there my Hive friends and followers!

Welcome to the 208th round of my special weekly photo challenge known as Appreciate Beauty of Nature with @phortun :)

Important note: I have been hosting this challenge in the same format for almost 4 years but I recently decided to introduce some major changes to it so please read all the updates below. The essence of this challenge stays the same though so the intro part will be the same as it was before.

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 ;)

HERE COME THE UPDATES

Originally, the prizes for the winners were just my full upvotes given to their entries but since, unfortunately, I lately had to power down significantly, my upvotes are not that big and motivating anymore so I decided to reward the winners of each round with additional 1.5 Hive each. So now, the winners get my full upvotes on their entries plus 1.5 Hive each. All of the other valid entries will be rewarded with some smaller (usually 50%) upvotes too so that all participants get rewarded for their engagement in this challenge.

In the past, I usually hosted this challenge on Thursday but because of the reasons described below, I cannot guarantee that anymore so now, I may roll out the new round on Thursday, Friday or even Saturday so if you guys don´t want to miss out on the fun here, please check out my blog regularly.

Also, in the past, I always tried to lead by example and thus open each new round with my own fresh natural photo taken during the previous 7 days. However, as you might now from my recent posts, me and my wife are now taking care of our newborn baby and it takes just so much time and energy that I simply don´t have the time to go out and take fresh natural photos anymore (btw late autumn and winter here in Central Europe are not favorable seasons for natural photography anyway) so instead, I will be using my old photos from cool natural places around the world that I have been to. Hopefully, in a few months, I will be able to go out to nature regularly again and take a nice fresh picture for each round just like I did it over the years but before that happens, I will show you some beautiful natural places that I got to see during our travels. It will also be a nice way for me to remember and relive those moments from the times when it was just me and my wife, traveling around the world - happy, young and free :)

THE RULES

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 7 days.

Add a few lines about the photo (at least 50 words) including the date and location.

You can start submitting your entries to this round in the comment section below from now until the next round. If you want to create a separate post as your entry, you can do that but please always remember to submit your entry in the form of a comment here under this post as well. I only check the entries submitted here as comments.

Prior to publishing the next round, I will pick 3 winners, give my full upvotes on their entries and send them 1.5 Hive each as the prize. The winning entries will be featured in the next round of the challenge. I also give smaller upvotes on the other valid entries as I mentioned before.

So that´s it. Let me now open the new round of my photography challenge called Appreciate Beauty of Nature with @phortun :)

Apparently, spring has come early this year, there are already many flowers blooming and buds sprouting out there in nature here in the Czech Republic and since we have already settled down in the new apartment, I should have a bit more time from now on so this is probably one of the last rounds of this challenge that I´m opening with an old picture. I really hope to resume my tradition of opening each round with a fresh natural shot again soon. But back to the picture for this round. As you can see, it was taken far away from my Czech homeland. This lovely beach is actually one of many free public beaches in Playa del Carmen, a charming seaside city on the Caribbean coast of Mexico. We lived in the city back in 2017 and then a few more times in 2018 and 2019. From most of the apartments that we rented in there, beaches like this one were within a short walking distance. Oh yeah, sweet memories...

In the last round of this challenge, we had 4 participants. After some thorough consideration, I decided to pick these 3 winners:

@videoaddiction with this entry from Turkiye:

Hi @phortun mate again. I took this photo in one of villages of Istanbul, Turkiye during my weekend activity last Saturday. The weather was super nice and about 20 C. It was a great change to get out of home and boredom of the wintry days. It is my favourite place where I visit and have a barbecue on such occasions. Soon I will also share a post about my visit. Thanks!

@franzpaulie with this entry from the Philippines:

This month is more of a butterfly meeting along the way. This is when I hiked the other side of the hill Puhagan, Valencia Philippines this weekend. How can I say a few words to that :) when in fact that's people's favourite place to go to; hikers, cyclists, and campers are the kind of people you'll meet. There are restaurants situated on this hilly side too and more importantly, it's never crowded maybe because it's steep enough and not everyone likes a risky ride. Thanks to that :) If you love to see fog, beautiful landscapes, 50 shades of green and find yourself in a cloud level well this is the place.

@usagigallardo015 with this entry from the Philippines:

Hello @phortun my first time to join your contest. My pleasure :) And let me tell you about our place and why I choose this image. Its a school of our water world here in the Philippines, yes my place is famous to be called that. It's flooded always :D The phase really changed a lot. And for 2 decade Citizen here, I was unpleased with the changes. The bluest water you see was a rice field before but it goes like that. Me and my husband graduated also on that school and now we have two grade 12 & 8. I took the photo outside our house and our kids can choose, to walk or to paddle to our boat. But at the end they need to choose both because it's already a mandatory rule. We can't go out our place without our boats. Unless we want to soak in flood.

Congratulations guys! It was my pleasure to give you 100% upvotes on your entries and send 1.5 Hive each, you can check that out in your wallets :)

I am looking forward to what you all will come up with in this round :) Have fun everyone and don´t forget to... Appreciate Beauty of Nature!

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

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