Appreciate Beauty of Nature with @phortun: round 153

Hi there my Hivean friends and followers!

Welcome to the 153rd 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 apologize for rolling out this round today on Friday and not on Thursday as usually do but the reason is actually simple, even though I was out in nature yesterday, trying to capture something nice for this challenge, I ended up with such miserable pictures that I actually decided to postpone this round by one day and go out again today. I did, I just got back from the park like an hour ago but the photos that I took there still suck pretty bad :( Like I mentioned in my post where I shared a bit of insight into my regular series last week, taking decent natural photos here in Central Europe in this part of the year can be very difficult. But I don´t want to delay this round anymore so here I am, opening it with this mediocre shot taken in the Central Park here in the Prague neighborhood of Stodulky some two hours ago...

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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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@jlinaresp with this entry from Venezuela:

This photo is my participation... "Remains of the old forest"... It is a photograph taken last Tuesday (17/01/2023) when I decided to walk to the outskirts of town, where areas with very old trees are preserved and whose wide crowns with long branches and particularly fine foliage, provide an enchanting sight to photograph (commonly called "Samán" in our town, these trees can reach 20 meters in height). I took a lot of photos that day, but almost all of them were from below the forest... I even shared a post yesterday with those photos from that low angle... But this photo was the only one I took with a panoramic view of the forest , so I had left it out of my post for differing on that... But now it has found a place here in this nice challenge!!! Thank you very much! Nikon D7000 | F/7.1 | 1/500s | 18 mm | ISO 320 Location: Montalbán, Carabobo, Venezuela.

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@betterthanhome with this entry from Portugal:

It´s been a while since I have participated in your photo challenge but the place I´ve found yesterday is definitely worth to share with all of you. It´s on the beautiful Algarve in Portugal. Yesterday was perfect weather with no wind and very clam, crystal clear water.

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@xaviduran with this entry from Spain:

Hi @phortun, I look forward to your full recovery from your illness. Here is my contribution to the contest. Every Sunday my partner and I go for a short outing in the interior of the island where we live, Ibiza, Spain. It rains very little here so when it does, we are almost cheerful, so last weekend, despite it being rainy, we decided to go out into the countryside as usual. We went to an area in the north of the island that was once used for agriculture and today is almost wild due to the abandonment of agricultural activity by the farmers. Maybe it was the greyness of the day, but I focused on photographing the old dried carob trees, which take on very organic and sometimes disturbing shapes. As an example, the photo I am submitting to this week's contest. Camera: Fujifilm X-T2, Lens: Fujinon 14-55 f:2.8-4. Processed with Capture One.

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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! :)