Appreciate Beauty of Nature with @phortun: round 174

Hey there my Hive friends and followers!

Welcome to the 174th 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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We are currently amid the first heat wave of the year with the temperatures exceeding 30 C (86 F) lately here in Central Europe so being out there in nature is not really comfortable anymore. I still managed a few little hikes in the past couple of days though. One of them was in the forest surrounding the Motol Cemetery here in Prague, Czech Republic. It was there, on the little forest path, that I spotted this curious fella "hurrying" somewhere with his house on his back :) It´s the Roman Snail, one of the largest and most common snail species in Europe.

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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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@betterthanhome with this entry from Australia:

Yesterday late afternoon we went on a short hike up the Mount Emu here on the Sunshine Coast in Australia. The weather was super nice, almost no wind and the sun already began to go down.

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@franzpaulie with this entry from the Philippines:

This weekend we hiked and spotted this butterfly guiding the trail. Sure it loves photoshoots. That´s a rare beauty. This is located in San Jose, Negros Oriental in the Philippines.

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@xaviduran with this entry from Spain:

Hi @phortun. The summer days are longer as we approach the equinox, so because it is quite hot during the day, my partner and I decided to take our walk in the late afternoon. The picture was taken last Friday at sunset at 'Cap Roig' (Red Cape) about three kilometres from our home on the island of Ibiza, Spain. Camera: Fujifilm X-T2. Lens: Fujinon 18-55 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, 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! :)