The work of local amateur photographers has probably never been better. STEPHEN LEWIS ponders a prize-winning picture by a member of Kirkbymoorside Camera Club – and visits an exhibition of work by a York photography group.

IT is a stunning photograph. A rust-stained wreck lies on a desolate shore. Further out, a column of dark rock rears up, stark against a sky wracked with storm clouds.

This image was taken at Saltwick Bay near Whitby one evening last summer by amateur photographer Jim Cavanagh. Quite deservingly, it was part of a portfolio that won Jim the Hazlehurst Competition, held every year by the Kirkbymoorside Camera Club.

Saltwick Bay is an amazing spot for photographers, says Jim, a senior flood risk engineer with City of York Council who only joined the camera club last year. There is the scarred landscape, shaped by the alum quarrying that once took place there.

There is the nab, the sharp column of looming rock shown so dramatically in Jim’s photograph. And there is the wreck. This was once a trawler, the Admiral Von Tromp, which ran aground in October 1976. Two men died: fish hand George Eves, and John ‘Scotch Jack’ Addison, who drowned in the wheelhouse.

Their ghosts seem to haunt the shore still in Jim’s wonderfully atmospheric picture.

Something else makes this particular length of the North Yorkshire coast special for photographers, Jim says. Because of the way the coast here is orientated – angled more westwards than northwards – this is one of few spots on England’s east coast where you can watch the sun set over the sea in summer. Which is exactly what Jim, a 52-year-old father-of-two from Norton, was able to do.

• Kirkbymoorside Camera Club meets on the first and third Thursdays of the month at the British Legion Club at Kirkbymoorside. New members welcome. The club has a varied programme of events – including, on March 1, ‘My Kind of Light’, a presentation by Scottish photographer Ian Cameron. For details, or to find out more about the club, visit kirkbymoorside-camera-club.co.uk

POP into the Café 68 on Gillygate any time between now and April 8 and, in addition to enjoying a meal or a cup of coffee in this bohemian café, you’ll be able to view an exhibition of powerful photographs by members of another local photography group.

The 15 or so members of BlackDogWhiteWall have been meeting once a week for the past five years.

The group grew out of an evening class at Huntington School run by professional photographer Keith Meadley.

“We kept signing up for the same course again each time it finished because we liked it so much,” says group member Celia Maughan. “This stopped anyone else joining, so we decided to form our own group.”

The name of the group is a little joke. It all began with a discussion about lighting – and about how to properly expose a photograph of a black dog sitting against a white wall.

“It was suggested as a joke that we should call ourselves BlackDogWhiteWall as a reference back to the night classes that formed us… but after a while we realised we liked the name and it stuck,” says group member Steve Melvin.

In the past few years, the group has exhibited its work several times at York Theatre Royal. The new exhibition at Café 68 gives a good idea of the range and quality of their work – from Wendy Sykes’ glorious Mountain Meadow, a portrait of flowers in a field in Umbria, Italy, which glows with colour, to the austere abstraction of Patrick Kaye’s Untitled 1 and Caroline Watkins’ powerful study of Goathland Station in a blizzard.

There are 30 or so images in the exhibition all told: but you can also view the group’s work in its online gallery at blackdogwhitewall.com