A couple of days ago expired the deadline I had to deliver my best 10 nature pictures. Which sounds great if someone else chooses which ones are the best but for me it was a nightmare!
The easy part was to choose the folder I was going to work with. I went straight for the one I keep the pictures from my favorite beach on the east side Crete. It is a part of the island almost unspoiled with great beauty and amazing scenery!
On this peaceful scenery, Xerokampos is the most remote coastal village. "The Far East of Crete" as I like to call it and "krinakia" (meaning lilies in Greek) is my favorite beach. Apart from the fact that it is a gorgeous sandy beach it is also blessed with an amazing plant! Sea daffodil flourishes every fall and when it is truly mesmerizing to be there!
Pancratium maritimum (that's its scientific name) is practically a flower bulb that grows on beaches and sand dunes around the Mediterranean sea and a few more parts of the world. Extremely tolerant to hot and arid climates, sand lily (one more name for the same plant) has survived for thousands of years until the modern concept of tourism started to invade to its habitat with heavy machinery and all sort of constructions on the sand. Nowadays it is in danger of extinction and can only be found in remote and unspoiled coastlines.
"Krinakia" beach is one of the few frontiers where you can enjoy the sea, the sun and the natural scenery without any distractions. So if you ever come to this beach, or any other place that sand lilies grow, please be very careful and respectful towards this nature's miracle. Please don't cut it, don't step on it and most definitely don't uproot it! Just enjoy it and be grateful that they are still there!
I feel extremely blessed to live only a few kilometers away from such a wonderful place and it has become something like a personal ritual to go there every fall and camp near the beach at least for one night, so that I have the chance to make some new pictures both with morning and evening light. Of course I don't neglect to enjoy the scent and the beauty of those amazing plants along with the sea and the gentle sun of the Greek autumn!
The problem was that over the years I have gathered hundreds of pictures that I consider to be very good and choosing just 10 of them was a rather overwhelming task! So I have spent the last 3 days choosing, editing, reconsidering my choices, revising my edits and going back over the pictures again and again until I wasn't sure about anything!
But everything has to come to an end. So with great uncertainty but quite happy with the result I made my choice and the 10 chosen ones are on their way! I thought though to make a post with all the pictures that made it to the finals. Maybe it is too much for one post but I wanted to document all the work I have done those past few days and to give a complete view on the subject to the patient readers that will scroll all the way down :)
All the pictures have been edited from the scratch, hopefully better than the past, but most of them as well as some of the words have been posted before so I am using the #showcasesunday tag, an initiative of 
I uploaded the pictures in chronological order with no interference from my personal taste. Can you guess which ones I have chosen?
Below you can find the links to the counterpart posts of the previous years.
2018: Greek beauty! Escaping to the Far East of Crete!
All the pictures and the words are mine.
Thank you for reading and if you want to know more about me you can check out my introduction post.
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