Shadows And Reflections

Hello, Shadow Hunters Community members! 😎

It's been a while since my last post. Three years, to be precise!

In the meantime, the community has grown and evolved.
More than six years ago, a small group of enthusiasts who loved shadows and reflections grew into a community of 3716 members, which continues to grow with three weekly competitions that reward anyone who posts shadows or reflections.
If six years of stability and regular rewards isn't a sign of trust, then I really don't know what it is.

If you don't know, the Shadow Hunters community paid $8801 in rewards last year! $3954 author rewards and $4845 curator rewards! Source.
And Layer 2 tokens from Hive-Engine and Hive account@ecency Points don't count here.

It is crucial to understand that our community doesn't prioritize technical perfection, such as framing, lighting, contrast, colors, or resolution.
Instead, we value originality and the ability to capture unique moments, like an intriguing shadow or reflection. You don't need a professional camera to participate-most of our members don't. A mobile phone with a camera is all you need to snap a photo of an interesting shadow or reflection anytime, anywhere. This inclusivity means you can contribute to our community on a walk, at lunch, or just paying attention to your surroundings.

There are currently three weekly contests and we all hope that this will continue in the future. The community will reward every original photo.

Shadow Hunters (SMaSh) round 331
This is one of the oldest contests on the Hive Blockchain, hosted by Hive account@melinda010100. It's been running every week for over six years. We're looking for exciting and original shadows. The ten best shadow photos + three honored mentions are awarded each week.

Reflection Hunters round 177
The competition, hosted by Hive account@olgavita, has been running successfully for three and a half years. Five of the most interesting reflections and five honorable mentions are awarded each week.

Guess The Shadow Contest round 4
Guess the Shadow is a new contest, hosted by Hive account@idea-make-rich. We started this when the two most used front-ends in the Hive Blockchain (PeakD and Ecency) got the pool functionality.
Here, participants see a snippet from a photo with shadows and vote to decide which photo it's from. Everyone who guesses gets a prize in tokens, and everyone who votes gets Ecency Points.

You can see the collages of all the reward-winning photos in ArchonTribe News. The Shadow Hunters community is a part of ArchonTribe, a multi-community Tribe. (Shadow Hunters, Ladies Of Hive, Feathered Friends, and Feel Good).
Otherwise, the Archon token has some problems due to the transfer of ownership from Hive account@taskmanager to Hive account@ecoinstant, and the Archon token generation feature in comments in these communities is not (yet) working as previously.
However, if you enter #archon in your keywords when you post, you will automatically receive a portion of the liquid Archon token.

I must also mention The Best Shadows And Reflections, a weekly selection of the most beautiful shadow and reflection photos edited by Hive account@jlufer for a few years now, and I thank him for that and hope he will continue to do so in the future.

And a word about community rules.
Although Shadow Hunters is not a large community, with three weekly contests, there are over two hundred weekly community posts, and all of them MUST be managed, moderated, and rewarded.
It's essential that you read and understand the specific rules for each contest. This will ensure that you're well-informed and prepared for participation.
Just a few general ones:

• The shadow or reflection you post must be original and yours, not lifted from somewhere on the internet or AI-generated.
• One post per person. Shadows or reflections from multiple different accounts owned by the same person are not allowed.
• The focus of the posted photo must be on the shadow or reflection and not on something else
• The use of image editing tools is allowed
• The title of the post must include: Contest and Round/Entry
• The post must contain at least one photo of a shadow or reflection and at least 50 words
• You must include a link to your post as a comment on the weekly contest post, but it's even better and easier to judge if you include a photo
• Multilingualism: English is the basic language, but you can include other languages.

Bonus: Posts with more than two photos and at least 250 words may be eligible for Ecency curation

I would also like to thank Hive account@melinda010100, the community's primary admin; without her and her efforts, this community would not exist,. I also want to thank Hive account@annephilbrick for all the background work and all the other sponsors who allowed this contest to go ahead.

And for the end:
It's slow going, but we are making progress. We launched a website that displays all our community posts some time ago. It's not yet finished, but you can look at it for starters here.

I hope you have a lot of good photos of shadows and reflections for the contests!