Hello Nature Lovers !

I would like to cordially invite you to another great week of the Amazing Nature Contest. There were already so many excellent entries regarding how amazing nature can be in the past episodes, thanks to all of you, but there is still so much more to see! ^^ To participate in #amazingnature just create a post that shows how amazing nature is for you personally. This can be anything from a beautiful flower or animal to an astonishing sunset.

What is the Purpose of the Contest ?

I am a huge lover of nature and really enjoy to take pictures of all the lovely things that surround me every day, no matter if those are plants, animals or landscapes. I found Steemit to be a brilliant place to find and watch nature pictures from all over the world. There is such a diversity of great content out there, thanks to all of you, from different perspectives and out of various motivations. I would like to collect all those beautiful snapshots and their amazing stories in a weekly compilation so that you can all benefit from the beauty that we are facing all the time, but so often are not able to appreciate in the modern times we are living in.

This #amazingnature contest is at home in DNA, a organization run by people for the people, with the aim to foster and densify nature-appreciation in the blockchain. DNA is also the home of the #featheredfriends hosted by amazing @melinda010100 🦢.

Contest Rules :

• Use #amazingnature as FIRST TAG and CLEARLY MENTION that your post is an ENTRY for this contest.
• As an ALTERNATIVE you can use the #hive-127788 TAG prior to #amazingnature as the first one. It is the tag of the AMAZING NATURE community.
• All pictures have to be your own. You can use the amazing nature banner if you like or create your own.
• STATE IN THE TEXT why those pictures are representing YOUR AMAZING NATURE. This is an essential part of this contest.
• Drop the LINK to your post IN THE COMMENTS. You can add a picture if you like. It is NECESSARY as I have to post a link in Discord on Friday, 5 days later for voting and also for my own compiling purposes.
• The entry window is open for ~ 5 DAYS. Watch out for my FINAL CLOSING COMMENT!

If you miss the entry, please wait for the next round. As I have to work and also a family to manage, there are no fixed UTC times and the window can open in a wide range between 10 am - 10 pm and therfore also close accordingly ^^

Possible Topics :

As nature covers an incredible wide range there is really anything possible. Amazing Natures categories could be anything from the following topics:

• Botany
• Zoology
• Geology
• Landscapes
• Philosophy
• ... Surprise us ^^

Prizes to Win :

• 1st Place : 3 SBI
• 2nd Place : 2 SBI
• 3rd Place : 1 SBI

I will always try my best to link and present all participants of Amazing Nature in the entries section of the announcement posts that will be published roughly one week later on Sunday (depending on my time schedule this may shift some time ^^). This way you will have a nice compilation of them all. As an special feature, the new title picture of the contest will be created from the entry of the contest winner. This time it is from @whatisnew.

How are the Winners choosen ?

The voting for the winners will be done by the whole DNA community. Therefore we created a special contest channel in the DNA Discord (Amazing Nature Contest). Here I will post the announcement post including the winners (Announcements) EACH SUNDAY together with all your entries (Entries) EACH FRIDAY. Every member of DNA will be able to assign "voting emojies" under the entries for 24 HOURS and in the end those three with the most of them are the lucky winners. This I hope should lead to a more objective consideration than just involving myself as a judge. I will engage as a judge in case of a draw ^^

The winner of this weeks contest with her very first entry is @whatisnew. She is a huge fan of cats, dogs and nature in general and you can find a lot of great posts in her blog regarding those topics. For this week she entered with something amazing, a pregnant praying mantis ^^ .. She found her laying on the sidewalk motionless, but in the end she was only sleeping and after waking up slowly she started to move away. In addition the post is full of intetesting and informative facts about the mantis in general and I can highly recommend a read if you always wanted to know more about this beautiful insect. I am glad that you found out about our little community ;)

@whatisnew

This nice series of great crocodile photography here was submitted by the great @melinda010100, host of the #featheredfriends. She took those pictures from the safety of her car window in Georgia in the USA, while she was on a 4 mile auto tour through the Savanah Wildlife Refuge. In a total of nine pictures that she presents to us, she shows crocodiles in varies sizes, positions and locations. Her pictures are really beautiful and leave an impression of quite dangerous reptiles. Thank you for those great pictures showing a wide range of those majestic and ancient reptiles ^^

@melinda010100

Here we have the entry from @barbara-orenya, a joyful french artist fron France who creates extremely beautiful and cheerful drawings. I really like those and my son loves them. Sometimes she combines her art with some real animal photography like I saw her doing it with snail once ;) .. It is her second entry to the contest and this week she shows us this nice duo, consisting of a white horse and a brown donkey. She was so lucky that those curious animals approached her and posed in front of the beautiful mountain region of Haute-Savoie in France. These picture series by her is very beautiful, with a nice setting and full of nice contrasts that are really fun to watch. Thank you very much for this entry ^^

@barbara-orenya

@annephilbrick

@alexanderfluke

@seadbeady

@manuelramos

@mers

@engrsayful

@kamrunnahar

@offgridlife

@brittandjosie

@nelinoeva

@isabelpena

@haastrecht

@akinome

@mariacaffrey

Todays feature is about @lesmann. He describes himself as an lover of "Art, Spirituality, & Living Philosophy". Also you can find photos of animals and plants amongst his blog, his focus is on abstract art, as you can see in the two example pictures from his blog that I show you here. I have to admit that I am not an expert in art, especially not abstract one. But it is an interesting perspective and motivation to reflect about nature and as there are some art lovers amongst the Amazing Nature community too, I hope that some of you may find this steemians blog very interesting ^^

@lesmann

DNA - Densifying Nature-Appreciation:

DNA is an organization, managed by @medro-martin, to foster and DENSIFY NATURE-APPRECIATION which aims to establish REPORTS OF BIODIVERSITY DATA that is contributed by all of us Steemians and subsequently cataloged.

Therefore DNA searches for HIGH-QUALITY posts that aim to DESCRIBE and determine the BIODIVERSITY AROUND YOU with added EXPLANATIONS and INFORMATIONS. For these informative posts they offer a CURATION SERVICE using the @dna.steem account. It is also a CURATION TRAIL.

At the moment DNA is also the home of the #amazingnature contest for all your post about the amazing nature all around us and also the home of the #featheredfriends hosted by the lovely @melinda010100 🦢 for all you great posts about our feathered friends ^^ But we hope that more nature related communities will join, or maybe some Steemians start their own little project there ;) .. Maybe even you?

If you are INTERESTED in DNA, please do not hesitate to ask about it, or directly JOIN US in the DNA DISCORD ;)

"By The People, For The People"

Steem Terminal Discord:

There is another initiative here on Steem that I would like to bring close to you as I absolutely love them, the Steem Terminal:

STEEM TERMINAL DISCORD

It is a great location for LEARNING ABOUT STEEM, Discord, and Steem-related communities, full of nice people that you may ask if you need ASSISTANCE, with nearly everything ^^ You will find documents to assist you, a place to learn and practice, and find out about the many opportunities to form CONNECTIONS with other Steemians.

It also host the REDFISH RALLY, a funny challenge for all those that are new here to the world of Steem. The Terminal also hosts the HEYHAVEYAMET project by @heyhaveyamet, which introduces all new steemians on a daily basis, so that you don't have to search for them ^^

So why not joining us in the STEEM TERMINAL DISCORD? You will not regret it ^^

"Your one-stop location for learning about destinations in the Steem blockchain and Discord"

Amazing Nature Community:

You all asked for one and here it is, the Amazing Nature Community. It is dedicated to all you Nature Lovers out there, no matter if Zoology, Botany, Landscapes or Philosophy ^^ You will also find many entries to the contest in there. It has the #hive-127788 tag and you can find it here:

AMAZING NATURE COMMUNITY

Currently I have 38 Nature Lovers on my autovote, which is set to 23% for 1 daily upvote at the moment. I reserve some voting power for manual curating. In addition the voting trail also includes 100% votes on dna, steemterminal and heyhaveyamet as I support all three projects.

Previous Participants :

I thank all of you who participated and voted this week and hope that you enjoyed the Amazing Nature Contest. I am looking forward to more excellent content every week ^^. Of course this format is open for all kind of critics that can increase the quality of the contest and I am always happy about anyone who wants to join us on this little adventure.

@akinome @alexanderfluke @alinix @annamarina @annephilbrick @apnigrich @artofwisdom @angelro @atomcollector @bahttg @bigsambucca @brittandjosie @bucipuci @careassaktart @cocolefleur @davidesimoncini @dkkarolien @elkezaksek @ellenripley @engrsayful @haastrecht @hangin @iamraincrystal @ireenchew @irvet @isabelpena @joanstewart @joebtc @johannpiber @justclickindiva @kamrunnahar @karbon @kheys @lighteye @leslierevales @manojbhatt @manuelramos @mariacaffrey @melinda010100 @mers @mintymile @misschance @molometer @myjob @mysteriousroad @nelinoeva @nilom @ninahaskin @offgridlife @paradigm42 @phortun @qwerrie @redheadpei @sarimanok @sayee @sallybeth23 @seadbeady @s3rg3 @theoctoberwind @thesobuz @travelsbyblue @trincowski @viking-ventures @whatisnew @wongbraling

If you want me to take you out of the list, or if you don't want your picture, in the case you are the winner, to be used as a new title picture, just let me know about it in the comments.

Best wishes,
Adalger