Appreciate Beauty of Nature with @phortun: round 5

Hi there my Steemian friends and followers!

Welcome to the 5th round of my special 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 Steem 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 go out and appreciate the beauty of our nature right now. The internet (and Steem 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. However, 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 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 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. Also, I haven´t reserved a fixed day for this challenge yet so it might be movable but it will definitely be hosted once every week.

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.

View of lines of tea plants at the famous Gorreana Tea Plantation, the only tea plantation in Europe. Family owned and operated, the plantation is located just outside of the little town of Sao Bras in the northern part of the Sao Miguel Island, Azores, Portugal. I took this photo last Thursday.

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In the last round, we had 8 participants (I am really glad the participation is finally growing) so picking those 3 winners was not as easy as in some of the previous rounds but after some thorough consideration, I made my choice :)

The winners are:

@nelinoeva with this entry:

Hi, i am glad to submit my photo of the woodpecker. I always admire watching the woodies pecking the trees. They are all around us and this particular one I found in the park in our neighbourhood. The photo is from Saturday in our ark in Varna, Bulgaria.

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@bucipuci with this entry:

Jedna "náladovka" z dnešní večerní procházky :-) Captured mobile phone east of České Budějovice.

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@deepresearch with this entry:

Ojcovian National Park, southern Poland, last Sunday, trip with my friends. This exsct spot is known as Cracovian Gate.

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Congratulations guys! It was my pleasure to upvote your entries :)

I am looking forward to what you will come up with in this round (that is probably the last round hosted on Steem, the next one should already be on Hive ;)

Have fun and appreciate the beauty of nature!

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This post was created by me for the Steem blockchain exclusively.

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Thank you for visiting my blog. If you like posts about #nature, #animals, #ecology, #crypto, #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 Steeming! :)