Appreciate Beauty of Nature with @phortun: round 123

Hi there my Hivean friends and followers!

Welcome to the 123rd 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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Summer is officially here, which means the colorful blooms are slowly disappearing from nature. I mean some flowers and trees are still blooming of course but generally, the colors in the parks, forests and meadows here in the Czech Republic are not as vibrant anymore. I tried to capture something beautiful for you today as I was walking around what the locals call the Central Park here in the Prague neighborhood of Stodulky and after checking out the pictures that I took, it was actually this thistle close up what looked like the best shot so I´m sharing it with you :) I took the photo just about one hour ago while getting baked by the scorching noon sun :D

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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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@bilgin70 with this entry from Turkey:

First of all, I would like to thank you for such a competition. Thanks to you, we had the chance to discover new places shot instantly. I hope we come across many great photos. I also want to contribute to this round; yesterday, I had a lake cruise with my friends and I had taken pictures. I want to share one of them with you. Location: Karaman, Turkey.

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@friendlymoose with this entry from the Netherlands:

It's always a pleasure to follow this great initiative. Lot's of cool nature photo's again. As a lot of flowers and plants are in bloom, there are a lot of bees in my backyard too. I took this one yesterday. Location: the Netherlands.

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@ander.alban with this entry from Iran:

Hello and what a good challenge, I like that concept! It might be a bit unfair but luckily I was hiking last week in the mountains of northern Tehran, Iran but it counts ;) It was amazing to hike to 2600 m with a whole view on Tehran and see the city lights wake as the sun sets. That's not visible here in this picture, it will be a dedicated post probably so if you wanna see that, you might soon.

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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! :)