The end of November is a time of year when the North Yorkshire landscape takes on a new lease of life, even though everything seems to have died or gone into hibernation.

Winter gives it a stark aspect; trees are bare, fields are devoid of crops, the sky is heavy, but its beauty is enhanced all the more.

Proof of this comes from a group of Ryedale photographers, whose are launching at exhibition on Monday at The Living Room in York.

Ryedale Photography held an exhibition there in February and, buoyed by its success, return there to show an exhibition based around a theme of the spiritual season, featuring mainly winter-based landscapes. Most of this is in black and white, but some photographs will be in colour.

Tracey Phillips is one of the photographers showing her work. She runs the Ryedale Photography group from her gallery in Nunnington. Exhibiting alongside Tracey are several other artists in the group, including award-winning photographers Janet and Richard Burdon, whose work was short-listed in this year’s Sunday Times-sponsored Take A View Landscape Photographer of the Year competition. Three of their photographs were selected for the resulting exhibition at the National Theatre in London and will be featured in a full colour book of the best entries.

Alan Clark, who has exhibited throughout the UK and the world, has concentrated on making paintings and black and white photographs of the landscape for the last 20 years, constantly trying to capture its drama, light and energy, and he will also be showcasing work in the exhibition.

“A good exhibition has synergy and gels together,” says Tracey.

“Many of the photographs feature trees and snow and most are in monochrome, though there are some in colour.”

Monochrome photography lends itself well to winter scenes, as black and white picks up much of the drama and atmosphere of a winter landscape; the different hues in the skies, as featured in Alan Clark’s image Two Trees Scar Close; or the winter mists that precede a snowstorm in Tracey’s Winter Glory.

The one or two that are in colour show the beautiful colours that winter creates across our North Yorkshire landscapes – the pinks, yellows and blues of a winter sunlit sky; the clear blues picked out in a snowdrift; the cooler brows of a fence covered in ice or snow.

Tracey says that the exhibition area, situated in the entrance hall of The Living Room, lends itself well to this exhibition.

“The space there is lovely,” she says, emphatically. “It’s quite dark and contemporary, a place where you could visualise one of the photos on a wall in someone’s house.”

Ryedale Photography recently held a similar exhibition at the Danby Moors Centre and they and several other photographers are also showing at the Look Gallery in Helmsley, which approached them to take over the first floor of the gallery. As well as those in the Ryedale Photography group, other photographers showing their work there include Ed Richardson from Harrogate, David Sault from York and well-known professional landscape photographers Steve Gosling and David Tarn from Harrogate.

Tracey hasn’t always been a professional photographer. She worked in the financial sector in York for some years before making the decision to leave her high-powered job and move, with her husband to Nunnington.

She joined Kirkbymoorside Camera Club 15 years ago and decided to turn her hobby into a career, returning to college to study photography. She set up the gallery and her studio in some outhouses which stood empty in the grounds of her home, inviting other local photographers to exhibit and sell through her gallery. The Ryedale Photography group grew out of this and she says she has never looked back since.

“Photography is considered as a fairly new art form in this country; ours is fine art photography,” says Tracey.

“A lot of the images in the exhibition are like sketches, quite minimalist. My work, for instance, is printed on thick art papers, like the paper watercolours are painted on; it looks like art and has a matt finish rather than the glossy finish of many photographs.”

She says that photography has become a popular pastime for many people, and that demand from people to learn new techniques prompted her to run workshops at her Nunnington Gallery.

“Digital photography has opened up photography to so many people; there are lots of talented photographers who have been inspired to do it,” she said.

As well as exhibitions, Ryedale Photography were the official photographers for the Ryedale Festival which Tracey enjoyed as she said she got to see and photograph old buildings and landscapes that one doesn’t often have the opportunity to see.

* The exhibition in the Living Room runs until January 6. Framed images start from £55.