Hey there my Hive friends and followers!
Welcome to the 221st 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 :)
I´m sorry guys to inform that June will probably be the last month for my challenges as I´m very likely to pause my activities here on Hive for some time from July onwards but let´s enjoy those few rounds that we have left. Traveling, nature and minimalism are definitely among my favorite things and this capture from Costa Rica combines them all :) A simple shot of a majestic heron patrolling the warm shallow waters of the Caribbean Sea in the Cahuita National Park. I cannot even describe how much I miss those carefree nomadic times. It feels like it has already been ages ago but yet, it was just a few years back. We visited Costa Rica in 2017 and the unparalleled richness of local fauna and flora made me fall in love with this country right away. Pura Vida, my beloved Costa Rica.
In the last round of this challenge, we had 5 participants. After some thorough consideration, I decided to pick these 3 winners:
@triplug with this entry from Romania:
Oh my, we're already on round 220, how quickly time flies. I fondly remember round 212, when out of 8 entrants, my photo was chosen as one of the three winners, and now as then I am just as happy, one of the many reasons to thank you @phortun. The picture I entered then was taken on 24.03.2024, it was early spring, but then I had made a promise to myself that I would come back to the same place and the same angle and take another picture but from another season (summer). Today 26.05.2024 I took my drone and went up to the same place here in Romania and tried to get the same angle and so another promise ticked, I am very happy to participate in this contest.
@godfish with this entry from Spain:
Here's one from my latest post. The photo was taken on Friday around 20:00, so it's still less than a week old ;) It's a view from the small plateau where Refugio Giner de los Ríos stands in Sierra de Guadarrama, Spain. Well, I wanted to capture the panorama, but the donkey was against :) However, I guess you haven't had many entries with donkeys, have you? This one is female and likes to pose. Her kind preferred to graze and kept disappearing in the vegetation.
@shamis with this entry from India:
Hello @phortun. This is the continuity of my last weeks visit ie., on 19th May, Sunday at Vagamon, a small village in Idukki district of South Kerala, India. Let me brief you about this picture. This is a pine forest. A man made forest during the reign of the British. A deep forest which is always cool and calm. The place is quiet popular for film shootings, especially South Indian. One of the main location, you can call in Idukki district. During winter, its fully covered with fog in the evening times and during summer the place is more beautiful, by the sun rays peeping through the tall closely knit Pine trees. As we went during rainy season it was a bit slippery due to the leaves and protruding roots. In some places the walking trails help us to move forward and in other places it is steep. It has become a popular tourist destination. You can find too many small souvenir shops, at the forest entry. Hope you have a wonderful week ahead.
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.
Hi @phortun mate
It has been too hot today, and thus I went to my second favourite place to do weekend nature activity. Thus, I would like to participate in the challenge this time as well. As said my second fav place, there is a creek flowing through the forest. It is great to have a barbecue with the sound of the flowing creek. Suprisingly, it is also located in Istanbul :) I think to share a post about there next week
Location: Istanbul, Türkiye.
Your fount of cool natural places for barbecue seems to be unlimited :D Nice one, thank you!
This time not the usual pic from me, and less nature to see, but this was in fact very natural (taken this Monday). In Vienna there is the Old Danube, a kind of lake where in the past the unregulated Danube often caused floods. There were loud frog croakings overall around us. For them it is a paradise there.
Not as much as nature as we are used to seeing in your entries but still a very impressive shot, wow! Thanks for showing us another interesting part of your city :)
I love the photo with the donkey, I am a fan of donkeys, I am a donkey lover 😃🤗.
Well, don't worry and don't feel sorry for your decision, do what you have to do and focus on the priorities that you have right now, we will miss you but we know that you'll come back more creative and enthusiastic than ever 🥳🙃😉.
My entry for this weekend, this are the flowers of a plant that grew alone in one of my pots hahaha, I don't know what it is but her flowers are lovely ☺️, I took this photo on Friday, May 31.
Nice to know that Gatubela The Ultimate Nature Lover loves all animals equally, even donkeys :D Thanks for your kind feedback and a cool entry! Very nice flower close up :)
Of course, I love them all 🐺🦓🐍🐂🦘🦛🦦🦇🐦🐓🦔🦈🦃🐠🦋🦂🦒🐒🐄🦊🦁🐨🐷🤗, donkeys are one of my favorite animals, my grandmother in Greece had a donkey, when I was a kid I was so happy when summer arrived because we were going to my grandmother's house who lived in the country and she had chickens, goats, sheep, dogs, cats and the donkey, she was so beautiful 🤎🖤, my grandmother always took us for a ride on the donkey and I loved combing her hair and petting her snout, donkey snout is super soft 😌. They are such noble animals 🤗🥰.
I'm glad you liked it 💮.
Aww, these are sweet memories :) Donkeys are cool animals. Just too bad they are often abused in the tourism industry :( In many countries (including Greece), donkeys are used to carry tourists who are often too heavy for them :( It´s just heartbreaking to see the poor animals carrying fat lazy inconsiderate humans on their back. I know that a healthy donkey can carry an adult person but not someone who weighs 100 kg or even more... There should totally be weight limits on the rides.
Soooo sweet memories 🥰
Yes, that's absolutely true, in many Greek islands, the most famous and also others that cars don't exist because they are really small islands, they use donkeys for tourism 😒🙄, both to carry people on them or to pull carts, the poor donkeys are working all day under the hot Mediterranean summer sun 🥵😞, that's not fair, I haven't been in a Greek island but I wouldn't pay for a donkey ride. There are some countries here in south America like Argentina where they use horses to pull tourist carts and they abuse of those poor horses 😠😡😥 but in some Argentine cities they are already prohibiting this type of rides thanks to animal rights movements.
Yes, donkeys can carry a lot of weight but not inconsiderate fat people who even laugh when they get on the poor donkey and see that it can barely walk with so much fat on top 😒😡🤬.
Honestly, I think the donkeys would be happy if they could carry people like you because you are like a feather :D But like I said, many people are stupid and inconsiderate and they don´t care if they hurt the animals by putting too much weight on them :( It can be the same with horses. It all depends on how much weight they carry and in what conditions the animals are kept. In Krakow, for example, where we lived for some time, there are horse carriages too but there are two big and strong horses for each carriage and the carriage usually carries just a few people (like 3 or 4) so it feels like the horses are comfortable with that. But I know that in some other cities and countries, there is just one horse for the carriage and it´s loaded with many people. That´s animal abuse for sure :( I would just love to kick those lazy fat asses down from the carriage!
🤭🤭🤭 well, that's true, I'm like a feather hehehe 😸🤷🏻♀️.
You know, donkeys can carry a lot of weight but most of the donkeys that people have to carry load they work for a short time and not everyday but the poor tourism worker donkeys have to carry stupid and fat people 7 days a week until the sun goes down, and I suppose you must already know that in summer, in Greece the sun sets around 9 o'clock pm so that means that they probably have to work more than 10 hours 🙄😒😡🤬, that's animal abuse and here in Venezuela we call that animal abuse.
I have seen those huge and strong horses that people use on farms and fields to transport crops, merchandise and even as transportación but most of those horses are breeds specialized in heavy lifting like the Percheron, amazing and beautiful animals by the way 😻, I wish I have one 😃🐎, they look like powerful superheroes 💪🏻 hehehe.
But yes, in most of the countries that have tourist carts, like Argentina, they use normal horses that they have neither the size nor the strength to work so many hours and carry so much weight, especially since most of those carts only use one horse 🙄😒.
Yeah, me too, get off that carriage 🤬.
I am hardly going to shoot anything more special than this and nest close-up for this challenge. The anthill is in Divoká Šárka park and is about 1 meter high. That’s quite a huge effort given that Czech ants are considering that Czech ants are not particularly large, nor are they famous for living in huge colonies. Anyway, the ants didn't seem to take Sunday off and were restlessly running back and forth.
Nejsou velcí, nežijí v početných koloniích a hlavně nejsou nebezpeční. Čeští mravenci :) Pamatuju, jak úzkostlivě jsme si v kostarické džungli dávali pozor na bullet ants. Bullet, protože jejich kousnutí bolí jak rána z pistole :)
Díky za zajímavý soutěžní příspěvek!
Tak Kolumbijci to mají s mravenci jedna jedna, ne? Pokud vím, minimálně nějaké druhy tam loví, praží a jedí. Taky jsem jeden balíček dostal. K pivu docela dobré :)
Je to možné, ale v Kolumbii jsme se většinu času pohybovali v nadmořských výškách, které mravencům příliš nesvědčí :) Ale teoreticky by to určitě šlo, v tropech je ten hmyz obecně mnohem větší než v jiných podnebných pásech. Kdyby sis opražil českého Ferdu, moc by ti toho z něj nezbylo :)
Jedí se prdelatí mravenci, Ferda byl hubeňour :)
https://www.indietraveller.co/giant-fat-bottomed-ants/
Claro que si - Hormigas Kardashianas :))
:)
Crickets are a species of insect that can be potentially dangerous for crops since they consume plants and if not controlled can devastate crops very quickly.
However, crickets are one of the animals that contribute to the concert of sounds at night and they "SING", to look for a mate, producing a sound that can be heard from a great distance.
This sound, as seen in the video, is produced by rubbing the rear wings, with which it produces this very characteristic sound and which is an accompaniment to the nighttime concert.
I hope you like it, waiting for your comments and suggestions.
https://ecency.com/hive-127788/@alfrin/appreciate-beauty-of-nature-with-55e27cc74aff3
Thanks for another interesting entry!
I always try to search and enrich you with interesting entries
Díky za cenu :)
Rádo se stalo. Vedle dnes už legendárních gangsta racků jsi tu právě proslavil i gangsta osla :) V jedné z mých oblíbených restauracích v Playa del Carmen jsem si rád dával burrito loco, jen taková drobná asociace :)
A já si zase čas od času dopřeju siesta del burro ;)
Hezky :) To jsem neznal. V tomhle jsem konzerva, v Mexiku jsem si power nap dopřával téměř výhradně až po obědě, jako místní :)
Very sad indeed, to read that you are pausing/leaving your activities in Hive.
Very sad for me too my friend but it will only be a pause ;) I cannot say how long but definitely just a pause, I´m not leaving. And as long as my new job allows me to do so, I would also like to buy back the stake that I had to power down. I may not be active here now but I still love Hive ;)
I know that it is not easy to publish in Hive while we have a full time (and demanding) job. This is the reason why I do not publish here everyday and my posts are short.
I hope to see you back!
All the best in your future endeavors
Gracias & hasta luego amigo! :)
Absolutely agree with u.. so sad.. 😔
Když půjde všechno podle plánu, bude to jen pauza ;)
No to dufam,si prvy clovek s ktorym som sa tu zacal bavit vo vacsom haha..
V tom případě o důvod víc, abych se vrátil ;)
I am sorry to read here that it is possible that June will be the last month of the contest initiated and supported by you, I respect the decision you will make, after all in life we have to make decisions that most likely will influence us through life.
For me it was and is a pleasure to be among those who participate in your contests.
I'm sure it's a very hard decision for you, after all it's about your work here, the hours spent in front of the computer, and yes, to reach such a performance as yours here is a long way.
My friend, time will make everything clear.
Ouch, I got carried away and forgot to thank you because my entry was among the three winners.
Thanks for your kind comment my friend, I think I have already written enough posts about my real life situation (maybe even too many :D) so hopefully, people will understand. But it should really be just a pause. There will be a lot to learn in the new job plus we have a little baby at home so time will be even scarcer for me. I wish I was a multitasker like some of my friends but I´m not. I really need to focus on what I do. But once I feel comfortable in the new job, I will come back here, no worries ;) Thanks for your continuous support and encouragement. I really appreciate it.
My friend, I am happy for you, for saying stop and having the courage for a new start, I am happy for your positive thinking putting your priorities first.
You see, exposing your real life here(family) and that may be a brave gesture but this way those who visited you saw what kind of guy you are, exactly the same model I chose.
BTW You're welcome!
Thanks for these kinds words my friend. It means a lot. Have a lovely day :)
😉
Firstly, thankyou so much to choose my entry. But sad to know the challenges are coming to pause. Though Iam not consistent in posting photos here, happy to be a winner this time. It is because I travel hardly, which means no present photos to post. Anyway, good luck to you my friend @phortun .
Thanks for your feedback. Well, there will be a few more rounds in June, then a pause will most probably follow but hopefully just for a couple of months or so... Oh and you are welcome, that was a great shot :)
Hello @phortun, this is my participation for the contest. The weather ☁️ today is very cool and calm. This is one of my favorite places (The garden), i took this photo outside the house, i went to check the garden, and i noticed that the corns have grown so big.
Location: Abia state, Nigeria.
Interesting close up, thanks for your entry! :)
You are welcome, thanks for organizing this contest
Hello phortun!
It's nice to let you know that your article will take 14th place.
Your post is among 15 Best articles voted 7 days ago by the @hive-lu | King Lucoin Curator by szejq
You receive 🎖 0.8 unique LUBEST tokens as a reward. You can support Lu world and your curator, then he and you will receive 10x more of the winning token. There is a buyout offer waiting for him on the stock exchange. All you need to do is reblog Daily Report 317 with your winnings.
Buy Lu on the Hive-Engine exchange | World of Lu created by szejq
STOPor to resume write a wordSTARTSorry Jo, just bored of your posts. Copy paste! Please, something new! 🤗❤️
Thanks for your interesting feedback but nobody is forcing you to read my posts :)