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 best 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 photography season, while being able to dial the clock back decades on the crowds!

For 2024 we’ll build upon our expereinces in prior years. Flooding of Badwater salt flats was extensive in December 2019 into January 2020 and From late August 2023 into 2024. Much of the Park’s lands were resurfaced by heavy rain. Fortunately we live nearby, so we scouted locations and conditions in November and found both new and improved sites (as well as some old ones that didn’t warrant a revisit that year). Days are short in December, and your time is important to us. 

Since it’s fully shortly after 6pm in December, we often hav eeither post-rpocessing sessions in the evening or a night shoot or two. While the peak night of the Geminid meteor shower will have interference from the moon all night in 2024, there is a solar maximum of sun activity this year, so airglow has been stunning in many of our night shots. We even captured aurora borealis twice in 2023, nearby in Nevada! A very bright comet will come and go in October, but we’re always monitoring new discoveries for any that might be of interest for night photography. 

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.