Wild Welsh Ponies on the Long Mynd, Shropshire

I was lucky enough to chance upon the wild Welsh ponies living atop the Long Mynd earlier this year. It’s always a pleasure to see them living naturally without (much) human interference in the wilds of the Shropshire Hills.

They tolerate their human observers pretty well and don’t seem to mind having their photos taken. A few of the mares looked to be heavily pregnant with large round abdomens; this was back in September, so I’m assuming they’ve had their offspring by now. Hopefully they won’t get too cold up there over the winter time! Although it would be lovely to see them in the snow, thinking selfishly as a photographer.

All wild Welsh pony photos were taken in Shropshire.

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Wild Welsh Ponies on the Shropshire Hills

A few weeks ago I spent a couple of days visiting my parents over in Shropshire. I'm lucky that they live in a very scenic part of the country, not far from some reliably lovely views and walks. On my first day I spent the afternoon walking up and around the Long Mynd. It's a place I've been a few times before and it hosts a number of footpaths and routes, with wide open views to all the surrounding Shropshire Hills.

I didn't really have a plan of action with regards to the type of photos I wanted to take whilst I was up there; I'm not much of a planner when it comes to taking images in my own time - I tend to just go with the flow and hope that I've brought the most suitable lenses with me for whatever situation or subject happens to present itself. Spontaneity is a wonderful thing I think, but I had a vague notion of getting some landscape photography done - When in Rome and all that... It came as a genuine surprise, then, to find myself taking portraits of horses for the majority of the excursion! I genuinely had no idea they were up there or that they'd be quite so photogenic.

In fact, after a bit of research, I think what I saw were actually ponies rather than horses, specifically Welsh Carneddau Mountain Ponies (please do correct me in the comments if I'm wrong!). Either way, they were beautiful, rugged looking creatures with quite an impressive range of  colours, textures and hairstyles.

Unfortunately the sun didn't really break through at any point so the lighting was rather dull and flat, but I'm still very pleased with how these turned out. All taken on the Fuji X-H1 with the Fujifilm XF50-140mm f/2.8 Lens, processed from RAW with Capture One.

Please visit other pages on my website, www.lukebennettphotos.com for much more content, including further landscape and nature photography from the UK.
To buy fine art photography of my UK landscapes visit my Print Gallery.
Also, if you are from Solihull, Birmingham, Coventry, Warwickshire or the West Midlands and are interested in hiring me as your wedding photographer, please say hi!
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