Death Valley Winter Light Photography Workshop
December 9-14, 2025
After decades of exploring Death Valley, I’ve come to the conclusion that winter is overall the best season to visit Death Valley for photography, as I describe here: “The Advantages of Winter Light.” In recent years visiting during this time, we’ve enjoyed stunning weather, low crowds for untracked landscapes, sometimes Badwater flooded for weeks, the most active meteor shower of the year (when the skies are dark), and low off-season lodging rates. It’s amazing to be in a major national park in a peak season for landscape photography, while being able to dial the clock back decades on the crowds!
For 2025, we’ll build upon our experiences in prior years (and decades). In some years we get favorable dark sky conditions to shoot the Geminid meteor shower, and in 2025 we’ll have excellent conditions: no moon for dark skies most of the night, then only a 25% crescent for the last 3 hours or so, to softly light up the foreground.
We’ve encountered water on the Badwater salt flats in 2008, 2011, 2015, 2019, 2020, 2023 and 2024. Flooding of Badwater salt flats was extensive in December 2019 into January 2020 and from late August 2023 well into 2024. Much of the Park’s lands were resurfaced by heavy rain.
In 2023 we even had extensive wildflowers in Panamint Valley in December! In 2013 another valley in Death Valley National Park had wildflowers in November. We track late summer and fall storms to anticipate when and where wildflowers will occur.
See why we like returning to Death Valley in winter again and again:
Sample Death Valley winter light images here.
What’s included:
- Guiding to subjects & light, based on our 70+ trips exploring the Park
- Constant fine tuning of itinerary based on forecasts & conditions
- Photography instruction, and composition consultation if desired.
- Post-processiong sessions for color and black and white photography
What’s not included:
- Lodging – camping to luxury, your choice! (discounts may be available; lodging recommendations will be provided upon registration)
- Transportation – carpooling optional (no super-spreader vehicle!)
- Meals/snacks/beverages (outdoor dining or take-out, as available)
- Entrance fee to the park
- Onerous group lodging terms (high price, poor cancellation terms, etc.)
Sample Itinerary
To ensure you get the best pictures and to accommodate for weather, we keep the exact itinerary flexible. This is an example of what to expect, though it may change slightly as necessary during the workshop.
- December 9 — Travel. Meet in the afternoon at Stovepipe Wells Resort. We’ll photograph sunset, possibly blue hour, then head in for dinner. We may opt to go out and get a few night shots before retiring to our hotel rooms for the evening. Or we may have a post-processing session on landscape, black and white, and night photography.
- December 10 — We’ll meet for sunrise, and make a few photography stops on our way to breakfast. We’ll grab a quick bite and then head back out for more photography. The sun barely gets over 32 degrees high this time of year, so the light will be good for much of the day. We’ll break for lunch and dinner as needed, possibly away from the main valley if we’re off on an extended outing for the day (toward Skidoo, Panamint Valley, Ubehebe Crater, Cottonwood Canyon, Beatty/Titus Canyon, etc).
- December 11 – We’ll have one more sunrise and morning in the northern and western halves of the Park, then we’ll move to being based out of Furnace Creek to be conveniently close to popular overviews like Badwater and Zabriskie Point. It gets dark early in December, so in the evenings we can practice night photography or conduct post-processing demos.
- December 12 – With careful attention to weather and sunrise/sunset forecasts, we’ll consider any opportunities unfolding to the east and south (Echo Canyon, Jubilee Pass, Warm Canyon, perhaps a short slot canyon hike, etc.). After dark we’ll practice our dark sky night photography technique for capturing Geminid meteors.
- December 13 – A full day in the field, possibly off in a particularly interesting area of the park. The peak of the Geminid meteor shower is tonight! Whoever is interested can join us for an extended shoot capturing as many fireballs as we can during the most active meteor shower of the year! Jeff won a coveted special prize in the 2011 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition conducted by the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. Lori and Jeff have been teaching landscape astrophotography to others in well over 100 dark sky night photography workshops since!
- December 14 – Meet for another sunrise in the Furnace Creek area, enjoy one last group breakfast with our new friends, pack, check out and make our way homeward.
- If you have the time, our 320-page photographers’ guidebook “Photographing California Vol. 2 – South” can give you more locations to shoot on your trip, in Death Valley or the southern Eastern Sierra.
Everyone can show you a few photos from Death Valley National Park, here are 1700+ of mine!
