One bright winters morning in December decided to return to Hastings Country Park parking up along Fairlight road and carrying on the walk where I left off my last visit here and to continue to the Fire Hills overlooking Fairlight.

Towards the Fire Hills

I enjoy walking this time of year when the weather is fine.  Usually visibility is good to excellent, the sun is a lot lower in the sky. There was some interesting light this morning as I approached towards the Fire Hills.

You can see the frost on the ground, I like the light catching the fence posts which acts as a leading line from the foreground to the background.  Maybe the bottom left hand corner is a bit of distraction?

On the fire hills close to the nature reserve there are some wild horses and ponies your natural lawn mowers.  A live horse or pony is not always an easy subject to include as foreground interest in a landscape photograph.   You need a large depth of field so the only option is to increase the ISO to achieve a faster shutter speed, assuming your using a tripod.  Lucky for me this inquisitive pony froze for the shoot.

I walked the stretch of the fire Hills up to the edge of Fairlight before turning around and heading back to Hastings.  The views by the cliff edge of the sea and coast are quite spectacular but the sunlight and ominous clouds were making a major contribution to the composition.

Soon the clouds became thick dark grey, the sun disappeared and it turned to rain, time to pack away the camera and head back to the carpark, walk and photo shoot over, but a nice morning and got some keepers.