Glorious Yorkshire: But which of these offers the best view of our wonderful White Rose county?

There’s the limestone pavement above Malham, the panorama of Whitby from the Abbey steps, the Ribblehead Viaduct – both a feat of engineering and a thing of beauty. And that’s just North Yorkshire.

East Yorkshire has the Wolds, West Yorkshire has the Calder Valley and in the south of the county there’s the fringes of the Peak District and, for those that prefer the industrial to the rural, there are also iconic football stadiums, imposing city skylines and poignant reminders of the mines, factories and mills which were once the county’s biggest employers.

It’s that diversity which has inspired the Capture Yorkshire photographic competition. It’s the brainchild of Chris Ceaser who, if it hadn’t been for a ‘sliding doors’ moment would have just been at the start of a new term, teaching Spanish at some secondary school or other.

Instead, on a bitter January morning he’s at his gallery on one of York’s most historic streets preparing for a recce to the equally frosty Budapest where he is thinking of running one of his photographic workshops.

“It is funny how life turns out. I’d gone back to university to do a languages degree and four years ago I had just graduated. My plan was to go into teaching, but around the same time I had bought a new camera and had started doing a bit of landscape photography.

“It was only ever meant to be a hobby, but I ended up with an exhibition at the gallery at Sutton Bank. Even then I didn’t think it was going to be a career, but ITV were filming a series about the Yorkshire Dales and ended up featuring my work.

“Everyone thought I was a professional photographer, so I began to think that maybe it was something I should be doing full-time.”

The rest, as they say, is history and having spent more than a decade plying his trade as a photographer, Chris is keen to encourage others to get out and enjoy the landscape.

“Yorkshire has such a diverse range of landscapes from cliffs and caves to flower-strewn meadows and glacial valleys. For me, North Yorkshire is the most picturesque, but in this competition we want to encourage people to explore all four corners of the county and maybe show us something different, something we haven’t seen before.”

In a previous life Chris was a salesman and he has used those powers of persuasion to secure a number of impressive prizes, including a £600 Epson printer. The shortlisted images will also feature in an exhibition at Chris’ gallery on Micklegate and a selection will also be printed in The Yorkshire Post. The entries will be judged by a panel of experts, including Vera Pavlova, senior curator at York Art Gallery, Rob Baxter, head of art and design at York College and a representative from the outdoor clothing company Paramor.

“I wanted to recruit people who had an artistic, creative eye, but I didn’t want them all to be photographers because I think it’s important that we have a variety of viewpoints.

“This is a landscape competition, but within those bounds I want to be as broad as possible. For me, an architectural image of say Leeds Town Hall is just as valid as a pictures of Robin Hood’s Bay. What we are really looking for are photographs which have something to say about Yorkshire, which sum up the spirit of the place.

“That’s a really wide brief, because Yorkshire means different things to different people,” adds Chris. “What I really want is for this competition to be a bit of a springboard. I want it to encourage people to get out an explore. So often these days we have our eyes glued to a screen, we have stopped looking at the world around us.”

Chris also hopes that once the final shortlist has been selected, the collection will also prove that old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words.

“In some quarters, photography is often seen as a poor relation to fine art,” he says. “I think it’s because people see a painting and think, ‘Gosh I wonder how many hours that took to complete’. When they see a photograph they think all it took was one click of a button.

“The truth is that the hard work has gone in before that button is ever pushed. Of course sometimes you get lucky, you see a scene in front of you and you capture it instantly, but more often than not hours have gone into setting up a picture.

“Composition is key and to get the very best image you have to know the area you a photographing like the back of your hand. You have to know where the best vantage point is, you have to know what the light is like at certain times of the day. And even when you have done all that research the weather can be against you.

“I have tried to capture the perfect sunset over Venice half a dozen times and every time I have failed because there hasn’t been a cloud in the sky. I know the perfect spot and one day it will happen, but there are somethings over which you have no control.

“Just like a painting, a photograph has to tell a story and it has to lead the viewer into the image. That might be through pile of rocks in the foreground or the way the light cast shadows across the trees and to get that perfect composition takes time.”

Chris has always used digital cameras and when it comes to entries for the competition there are no strict rules on the use of Photoshop.

“The truth is photographers have always manipulated images, even back in the days when they developed films in a dark room,” he says. “The difference now is that software like Photoshop has made those same techniques more accessible.

“Using filters and altering the exposure to achieve a particular look to an image is a skill in itself and personally I have no objection to people heightening colours, but there is a balance to be struck. Personally, I’m not keen on photographs which have been tinkered with so much that they look artificial.” Capture Yorkshire is open to April 1 and entry is restricted to one image per photographer per month. Those behind the top 60 images will be invited to send in a print and from those, 20 will be mounted and will form the exhibition at Chris’s gallery in June.

“A lot of photographic competitions only reward the top one or two entries. In Capture Yorkshire the top 60 will receive a certificate of commendation. We want to recognise as many people as we can and make this an annual celebration of all that’s great about Yorkshire.”

Capture Yorkshire is supported by York Mix and for full terms and conditions on how to enter visit captureyorkshire.com