– This is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. Welcome to Slovenia. (soft music) I’ve made it to Slovenia. This country has been on my travel list for quite some time now because of its incredible scenery. It’s in central Europe. It has Italy on its western border and Austria to the north, and it’s known for its mountains and lakes.
I’m currently at the beautiful and iconic Lake Bled. Even if you aren’t familiar with Slovenia, you might recognize photos of Lake Bled because it’s a very popular photography destination, which is why I’m here. So I’m going to be using Lake Bled as my base here in Slovenia. There are a handful of things I want to go see, but the country’s relatively small and quite drivable, and I’ve rented a car.
So I’m going to set up here, drive out to the things I wanna see. And in the meantime, I can hang out at the lake. The iconic centerpiece of Lake Bled is Bled Island, and this is the only island in Slovenia. A staircase of 99 steps leads to a church and there’s an old wedding day tradition for a husband to carry his bride up them.
And you can visit Bled Island any way you can get there really. You can hire one of the colorful pletna boats to take you. You can rent your own boat to paddle, kayak, or even swim. Another feature of Lake Bled is Bled Castle, which is purged high above the lake. And as beautiful as everything is during the day, it’s especially magical at night when it all lights up.
One of the reasons I really wanted to come to Slovenia is there are some incredible places to get Ariel photos here. For this trip, I’m flying the new DJI mini 4 Pro. Huge thank you to DJI for sending this to me. This is a tiny little baby. Look how small this is. It’s like the size of my hand. This is my first time flying one of the miniseries drones, which is DJI’s entry level series.
And the new Mini 4 Pro has a bunch of the flagship features integrated into it that the miniseries hasn’t seen before. It has omnidirectional obstacle sensing, which gives me so much peace of mind when flying. And with that comes the active Track 360 feature, which is so helpful as a solo shooter because I can highlight myself or another subject and the drone will automatically track it.
Also, something super cool about this drone is it does true vertical shootings. So when you wanna shoot Instagram reels, social media, whatever, instead of just cropping the image into a vertical ratio, it physically rotates the camera to be actually shooting vertically, which gets you that full 4K resolution.
(calm music) It’s another beautiful morning in Slovenia. I got up really early this morning and I’ve driven about an hour from Lake Bled up into these hills because this morning’s photography subject is this church that’s perched in these hills. It has a beautiful mountain backdrop, and I am so thrilled because I got fog and it was absolutely spectacular.
It just rolled through the trees, through the hills. I put my drone up and sent it out into the fog. The images I was getting, it was incredible. Well, I’m super happy with how this morning went. I’m gonna head back. I’m looking around me, there are leaves falling. You can see with each passing day that everything’s turning color a little bit more.
It’s so prettier. This afternoon, I’ve driven out to Triglav National Park to hike the Peričnik waterfall loop, and this is so cool. It’s even cooler than I expected it to be because the trail leads you behind this giant waterfall. Water is showering from the rock overhang, if you cannot tell, I’m soaked.
And it’s a pretty short hike too. The loop is only half a mile, but it is straight up and straight down. So I would still say it’s challenging, but short. Another water feature you don’t wanna miss in Triglav National Park is Vintgar Gorge. This is a 1.6 kilometer gorge with a really nice walkway through it, and the water is so blue and beautiful.
It’s the perfect way to spend a couple hours. I am back out again this morning photographing another church in the hills for sunrise. I think Slovenia is called the Land of Churches, or there’s some sort of like phrase for it because it’s known for having so many of these churches up in hills that are so photogenic.
What I love about this one is they light it up at night. So if you get here before sunrise, you can shoot it in blue hour glowing with the mountain backdrop behind it. And then this morning was just the most beautiful sunrise. There was kind of a hazy layer, so you could see the red sun rising over the hills.
The aerial images are absolutely stunning. The mini 4 Pro has been crushing it on this trip. I’m loving the extended flight time on this drone. Depending on which battery you use, you can get up to 45 minutes of flight time. And this drone can shoot 4K up to a hundred frames per second. I have so much time to fly around and scout out what I wanna shoot, and I wanna get all the different formats too.
I wanna get video. I wanna get photos. This drone does 48 megapixel photos. I am so happy with how everything on this trip has worked out. Basing myself at Lake Bled was definitely the right decision for me. I will say though, I imagine this gets very busy in the summertime. I’m here in October, so it’s fairly quiet.
So my tips for planning a trip, if you want to spend a good amount of time at Lake Bled, I would recommend staying on the lake. There is another town about 10 minutes away. That’s another popular place to stay at where you can drive into the lake. But I’ve noticed this week that there is very little public parking around the lake.
I’ve really loved staying right on the lake. I’ve had the most amazing view from my balcony all week, which I was not expecting when I got here. My jaw dropped. Also, if you’re planning a trip where you’re going to be renting a car and driving around like I did, consider flying into Venice, Italy.
That’s what I did. It’s only a three hour drive away from here, and it was so much easier logistically. Venice is a huge tourist destination, especially for Americans. So there are tons of direct flights from the US to Venice. You can rent a car right at the Venice airport. And driving here is really easy.
The roads are super nice. The rules are the same as the US. If you’re intimidated by the idea of it, you’ll be fine. Well, this is it for my time in Slovenia. I am so impressed with the scenery of this country. I’m already thinking that I need to come back in the winter so I can see everything in the snow.
Thanks for watching. Stay tuned for my next adventure, which I am starting tomorrow. My time in Europe is not over yet, so I will see you next time.