Thanks, Nigel - and sorry I forgot to include any info!
I was using my K-3, Pentax 16-85mm lens and camera-mounted Metz 58 AF-1. To begin with, the flash was far too powerful and the posts above were all with the flash at 1/4 power, bouncing the flash off the ceiling with the diffuser in place. There was a fair amount of hit and miss involved until I found settings for both the camera and flash that seemed to give a decent result. With the orchid shots, DoF was difficult to get as much of the petals as possible in focus. For the others, I found the best arrangement was to bring the crib/Santa further away from the tree to get the background effect I wanted.
All that probably sounds routine to others, but it was a good learning exercise for me!
Regards,

Then the sun came out and the shadows were lovely! Hope you like one or two of these! All K3 + Pentax 16-85mm. All comments welcome.
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Another wet day, so took to messing about indoors with the flash. Very much a novice experimenting here, so would be glad of any tips/comments which would help me improve!

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Lovely atmospheric images, David - I don't think there's anywhere quite like the Lakes in the rain.
Best wishes to you and your family,

These are indeed lovely images, Andrew. What I like most about the PU forum is that it's so frequently inspirational - I went to Lanzarote (and Teguise) last February, took loads of photos and it never occurred to me to try any mono shots. I certainly will next time! Coincidentally, we had a session on B&W photography at my local group last week which made me appreciate more how B&W makes you look at images in a totally different way.

Thanks for posting these, Andrew.

Simple but effective. Like it!

Love the first one, especially!

Congratulations, Bill, on your Landscape Photographer of the Year Adobe Prize! Just seen it, dominating today's Guardian's centre page spread - fantastic!

I think it's one of those images where the naked eye sees more than the camera can capture easily. You want to show both lots of sky (which is interesting, as Gwyn says) and lots of foreground (which has interesting cloud reflections in the still water.) The strip in the middle, where the light is falling, loses out a bit. I go with Gwyn in the end and say either show more sky or more foreground and crop, maybe 16x9 ratio, to make the central highlights a bit more prominent. But I like the idea of capturing that lovely light very much.

The second one is a classic. Lovely!