Appreciate Beauty of Nature with @phortun: round 188

Hey there my Hive friends and followers!

Welcome to the 188th 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. 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 in this post as well. I only check the entries submitted here as comments.

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. I also give some smaller upvotes on the other entries too so that all participants get rewarded for their engagement.

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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Despite the very busy schedule, I did manage to go for some nice walks and hikes in the past few days and of course I also remembered to take some pictures for this challenge while on those outdoorsy adventures but yesterday, I had such an amazing and unexpected encounter with nature that I´m actually going to use the photo from this encounter to open this round of the challenge. This is probably the first time that I´m using a picture here that was taken in the very center of Prague but that´s where the encounter happened. It was a lovely sunny day yesterday and me and my wife were enjoying some delicious ice cream, sitting on a bench, when suddenly, this super cheeky jackdaw landed on the very same bench, literally just some 20 cm from us. He looked at the ice cream and started talking to us, demanding his portion of the treat :D He was so insistent, it was ridiculous! Neither of us felt like sharing the ice cream with him, unfortunately, so we apologized and he, after what probably was some vicious remarks about stingy humans, left our bench and flew up to a tree to look out for another potential victim :)

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In the last round, we had 10 participants. After some thorough consideration, I decided to pick these 3 winners:

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@triplug with this entry from Romania:

I come today with a picture I took on 16.09.2023 in the Bucegi National Park in Romania, it is about Bolboci Lake, a lake artificially formed by creating a dam on the river Ialomita. If you want to disconnect from the hustle and bustle of everyday life and reconnect with nature, a place like this is perfect.

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@gatubela with this entry from Venezuela:

Wow @phortun, you were blessed with that amazing view on the top of the mountain 😻 and you could enjoy it with no people and human noise around you, that's a plus, I love it 🥰. Congratulations to the winners, beautiful photos 👍💚 My entry 👇, last Sunday in the Parque La Estación, La Victoria, Venezuela, where I go early in the morning to do Tai chi 🥋, this is a small part of our big green stage hehehe.

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@amestyj with this entry from Venezuela:

Congratulations to the winners excellent photographs, this week I had the opportunity to capture the flower of a plant known as dormidera and its scientific name is Mimosa pudica, this photograph was captured in a meadow in the Southern Area of the Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. It is undoubtedly a wild beauty of our ecosystems.

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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, Traveling, Photography, Animals, Ecology, Crypto, Sport, Fitness 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! :)