The 7 Day Lockdown Nature Challenge

Welcome to the ioMerino 7 Day Lockdown Nature Challenge.

With a big chunk of Australia now in Lockdown, we thought what better time to give you a bit of a nature challenge to keep you occupied and focused on how good nature is, and the chance to win some free stuff? OK, yeah, we know some of you are just here for the free stuff and that’s OK too. Because it’s pretty great stuff.

Here’s how it works:

• First of all, let’s get something straight, this is NOT a photography competition. You can still win if your photos are a bit crap. It’s about taking the time to notice things in nature, not about being an expert photographer. (That bee pic was taken by one of our Outsiders in his backyard but he's a bit of a smarty pants and can't enter so don't worry about him!)

• There’s a different theme for each day, and we tell you the themes below so you can totally take a picture in advance if you like. It’s not really the spirit of what we’re trying to do, but that’s up to you.

• Every day you submit the pic you’ve taken that matches the theme, and every day we select one random winner. You can submit a pic by sharing it on Facebook or Instagram and tagging it #ioNatureChallenge or send it directly to sputnik@io-merino.com who'll be helping us out with this competition.

• You’re only in the running for that daily prize draw if you share or submit it on that particular day. So if you submit a plant pic on Wednesday, you’re not in the daily prize draw because Wednesday is sky day. You can submit more than one pic for the same theme on the same day, (ie if you want to post two water pics on Friday that’s fine), but you can’t send us a water pic, a bird pic and a tree pic on Friday - in that case, only your water pic goes into the draw. A maximum of three pics per theme can be submitted and that gets you three entries.

• We will be doing an overall prize for best/most popular picture. So if you want to submit something a bit fancy you can.

• Entries are on the honour system. We won’t know if you’re submitting a photo you took in 2016, but we’re asking you not to. If you’re the winner in the grand prize draw, we will try and confirm it’s a photo taken during the challenge because fair’s fair.

• The daily prize is a ‘How Good is Nature?’ Universal T-shirt or long sleeve top. Your choice. The grand prize for best/most popular picture will be a $250 voucher. This will be judged by Team ioMerino with possibly a popular opinion component.

• We’re not going to bore you with Terms&Conditions because this is just a bit of fun, but let’s say you can’t swap your prize for cash. It’s only open to people in Australia. No correspondence will be entered into because that usually gets said. Prizes are drawn the morning after the day of the theme and we’ll contact the winner directly to arrange their prize. If we don’t hear back within seven days, you miss out.

The Daily Themes.

Day 1 Wednesday 21 July: The Sky. Clouds or Sunshine.

Day 2 Thursday 22 July: Plants & Flowers

Day 3 Friday 23 July: Water. (Can be a puddle, a bird bath, a sprinkler if you're not near water!)

Day 4 Saturday 24 July: Birds or animals. 

Day 5 Sunday 25 July: Trees!

Day 6 Monday 26 July: Smiles.

Day 7 Tuesday 27 July: Something outside that makes you happy. (This can be literally anything you want as long as it makes you happy.)

Some extra FAQs for you:

Are these dates correct?

They are now. When we launched we had a bit of a mix up, they are 100% correct now. Sorry. Our bad.

Can my pic have other stuff in it?

Of course, your sky pic can also have trees in it. Your water pic can have trees in it. And your tree pic can have water and sky in it. We're good like that. Ideally your pic will be mostly of the thing the theme is.

Here's the 'How Good Is Nature?' Tees.

And here's the 'How Good Is Nature?' tops.  (That picture on the left is a bit like what most of us look like in Lockdown right now.)