This isn't the first time I've been to Lake Lisi. I first went there last summer, and I experienced days of intense sunlight, but also the opposite with some incredibly threatening storms. Cracks of thunder and flashes of lightning above my head. The only time I didn't spend there was during days of intense winds. And Tbilisi is slowly heading into a strange period of weather from here on, after a few days of beautiful sunny days almost reaching up to the 30s, it's scheduled to rain and perhaps snow. The first of that is appearing in the form of incredibly strong gusts that appear out of nowhere despite that intensity of the sun remaining for now. Since it's Saturday, another trip to Lake Lisi felt natural. This area has quite a bit of life to it, and was incredibly busy this time around. Massively dense around the beach area, with so many little stalls for food and drinks, huge lines appearing for them all. Though of course a few cafes and restaurants in the area. This post isn't about that side of things though, yet again it's a drone focused post where I flew the drone a brief amount to capture some of the scenery despite the strong winds. And for once: my drone held up quite nicely despite the strength!

At this time of the day, the tall grass that is usually green in the warmer months were a dry and warm orange colour. This was a beautiful contrast to the very blue water of the lake. I wanted to capture it somehow so I not only shot it with the regular camera, but I wanted to fly over the landscape a bit with my drone for the aerial views. I shot a bit of this area before in summer with the drone, but I knew it wouldn't be as good as it could be. A lot of people were there skating around the lake, cycling, or just walking their dogs. So lively despite the lake being such a difficult place to get to. No direct bus from Saburtalo goes there (you have to get a few); you either get a taxi or drive your own personal car to get there. We chose to get the taxi to save half an hour of commuting via public transport. With how busy it ended up being I wasn't so certain on flying the drone in the first place, quite paranoid over disrupting the wrong people. I mentioned yesterday in a post that I was still feeling a bit of that drone flying fear after my experience in Armenia. Just a negative feeling despite always being too considerate of others with the drone. So with the winds and with that fear, I didn't get too ambitious with it. My creativity was kept quite simple: capture a few shots, land. 

The tall grass from above was beautiful, swaying in the wind. Several metres high. The landscape from above gave this really odd perspective, looking like some martian terrain, less like grass and more a dry, orange rocky environment. I've always wanted to shoot something like this, and it was a blast to finally be able to. I even shot a little video of the same perspective as the drone flew upward. I even chose to capture a bit of the pathway where people cycled, trying to tell a bit more of a story. In the past the sunsets here have been beautiful, but the sunlight was so strong lately that I couldn't get the perfect images. Some nice lens flares still which I always love capturing a bit of. Some of the drone's poor dynamic range had the sky blow out a little too much, so I just pointed things downward a bit more. I didn't spend a lot of time flying here, just one drone battery to capture a few images, and the rest were from the phone or from my camera. I do want to go back there again on a day with less wind, there's some really cool nature in the area. Large mountain ridges, an abandoned Soviet era hospital that looks like something from a horror film, and cows that farmers have walking through the environment. Upon the mountain ridge we also saw a person riding a horse, probably the most cowboy/western thing I've ever seen. I would love to capture them with the drone in 4k!

And to end the post, here is a cat which was sitting really weird in the cafe we went to. Enjoy.