The early scenes of autumn in the mountains of Armenia

In some parts of Armenia the autumn atmosphere has slowly been chugging along. Where October is often still considered summer with quite a strong heat found within the daytime despite the nights getting colder. Up in the north even the trees there are still a bit behind compared to other parts of the world. Though in attempt to not miss capturing the atmosphere in the north, deep in the mountains and forestry, a trip to Dilijan was taken. I took the drone with more intent to capture the scenes from above, rather than on the ground with the regular camera. A lot of the scenery around Dilijan features pine trees, if you have those around your area then you know that they pretty much just stay green even throughout autumn and winter. That was the case in some areas, though still there were some really beautiful early autumn scenes more higher up in the mountains where other trees reside.

You could see that some trees still held their green a bit. Some leaves were still just changing colour and had hints of orange and brown in them. Some trees had shed a few smaller leaves, leaving the forest floor still very much coated in leaves. But you could tell that the trees were still a few weeks away from truly reaching their prime autumn tones. There was a moment I wish I could've captured where just around the lake a large gust of wind appeared and littered the sky with leaves which slowly fell to the ground. A scene straight out of a Ghibili film!

I flew the drone around for a little bit. But that feeling of summer hadn't yet fled. The weather picked up out of nowhere and became quite warm and bright, a bit too much for my DJI Mini 2 which doesn't exactly have the best dynamic range. A shutter speed option but no aperture control beyond 2.8. Sometimes with the Mini 2, if you increase the shutter speed a bit too much, you notice the shutter flicker in the videos. Making them pretty much unusable. So the best course of action here was to just wait a bit for the light to disappear a little. Of course, to my luck, the next day would see heavy rain and be cloudy, full of diffusion and perfect for some beautiful atmospheric wintery scenes.

After having a little bit of lunch by the lake, and a short walk into the forest, I decided to try again. The light still wasn't the best, but it was much better than before, allowing me to actually capture something. I flew around for a while and tried to find some areas of the forest that would stand out with its colours, but battery and RC connection issues (again my DJI Mini 2's greatest problems) led to having to keep the drone relatively close by. But that didn't stop me from flying the drone really high up to get some really beautiful top-down perspectives of the surroundings. Still a lot of fun. Though I felt that I needed to return again at some point to really capture what I wanted. And that the Mini 2 yet again displayed its desire to retire.