AMATEUR and professional photographers are being invited to focus on the Yorkshire Dales National Park as part of a project aimed at documenting one of the country's most awe-inspiring landscapes.

A wide variety of 'image-makers' are needed for the Yorkshire Dales Photographic Project, launched by professional photographer Tom Marsh, to create a 'snapshot' of life in the national park, in all its glory - and its more everyday concerns.

Tom is looking to enlist as many photographers as possible to take part, not least because of the large area the project aims to cover - daily life in the park as well as its splendid views and vistas.

And potential participants can find out exactly what the undertaking entails with a free introductory session on Saturday, meeting on the village green near the Red Lion in Burnsall at 3pm.

Tom, who runs his own photographic tuition business Yorkshire Photo Walks, says: "It's an immense task to cover the entire Dales park, but the results will be fantastic. The project will need at least 134 people to get involved, if each photographer covers about 10 square kilometres. There has already been a lot of interest.

"The point is to document this vast landscape, giving a 'snapshot' of life in the park in 2016, so we need people from a variety of photographic disciplines to, in effect, make history.

"Successful applicants will be ask to take pictures at, or as close to as possible, to each point at which the Ordnance Survey map grid lines intersect within their allocated area. When all these are put together we will have an exciting and historically important document.

"The images produced will be archived for future generations to look back upon and exhibited around the national park and beyond.

"This is going to be one of - if not the - largest photographic grid projects ever conducted. And you can take part either as an individual or as a group."

Photographers will work throughout the summer and into October while British Summer Time is in operation to make the most of the longer days. When it is completed the project will have at least 1,769 pictures to show for it.

Tom, a photography graduate of the University of Westminster and Bradford University, adds: "What the project needs is people with raw talent and ideas on how to come up with something creatively different while documenting all the different aspects of the Dales national park, from the essence of its beauty to the people who live and work in it."

Anyone interested in taking part should apply via the website yorkshirephotowalks.com/gridproject.

Progress of the project can be followed at facebook.com/yorkshiredalesgridproject, twitter.com/dalesgrid