Appreciate Beauty of Nature with @phortun: round 1

Hi there my Steemian friends and followers!

I am excited to roll out a new weekly series that I have been thinking about for quite a long time already. I titled the series Appreciate Beauty of Nature with @phortun and this is the very first round of it :)

By now, most of you have probably noticed that I am a dedicated nature lover and most of my content here on Steem consists of stuff related to nature, animals, environment etc. I have hosted many photo contests on natural themes but so far, they have been mostly random. However, as a very organized person (with some severe OCD symptoms :D), I am not a big fan of randomness so I figured it would be great to have a regular series where my fellow, like-minded Steemians could share natural photos every week or so.

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 and plants 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.

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 will submit my own fresh natural photo to every round´s post too :) Here is my contribution to this round.

As you might now, we recently relocated to the city here on the Azores island of Sao Miguel so I am not that close to the pristine Azorean nature anymore but we have a beautiful municipal park just a short walk from our current apartment and this is where I took this shot just yesterday.

I hope you will enjoy this new photo challenge. I am looking forward to checking the first entries :)

Have fun and appreciate the beauty of nature!

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