Winter is one of the most interesting and least crowded seasons to pursue compelling landscape photography in Yosemite. The climate in Yosemite Valley is just warm enough that snow often dosen’t stick around for long, but passing cold fronts can easily drop a few inches of snow, docorating the Valley’s dramatic features with a frosting of white. And passing stormscan bring dramtic storm lighting and interesting sunrises and sunsets. When the “storm door is open” as local meteorologists like to say, there can be a storm every 5 days of so, making our 5-night itinerary good for intercepting some interesting and photogenic weather and conditions. 

We also time this workshop in the last two weeks of February, when every year a lot of photographers pursue shots of sunset-backlit Horsetail Fall from a few select locations. The thinning of trees in Yosemite Valley to remove beetle-infested ftrees and reduce fire danger has opened up additional interesting new compositions for Horsetail Fall. Since 2020, all photography locationsfrom the Merced River to Southside Drive have been closed on the days when the iconic Horsetail Fall sunset lightis available. Tree clearing has opened up some new viewing locations, but level walks of 1-1.5 miles each way on Northside Drive are typically required to reach the open shooting locations in 2025.

The iconic Horsetail Fall sunset shot requires specific conditions: sufficient snow pack above El Capitan, a warm enough day to melt the snow to feed the waterfall, and clear enough weather to the west as the sun sets for the sunlight to strike the waterfall. So it’s best to have 5-6 nights available to try for it! We’re in the Park for roughly half of the best nights each year, maximizing our chances that one night will be “just right”. Weekends and holidys require daily entry reservations to get into the Park, but our workshop participants can enter for six days for the duration of the workshop.

Regardless of Horsetail Fall, winter can be an enchanting time to shoot Yosemite Valley, particularly if we get a passing storm. The photography opportunities can be spectacular! Every year is different, so this is one of our workshops that some of our clients repeat over and over again. It’s also one of our more popular workshops, so it tends to fill a little faster than most.