Fall Photography in Lake Tahoe

The last time we were at Lake Tahoe was during the pandemic lockdown, where the family and I spent several weeks on the road visiting National Parks and various places we had always wanted to see. Lake Tahoe was on the list, and we spent five days here in 2020. We came to Lake Tahoe directly from Glacier National Park, and at that point in our roadtrip we had already been to Grand Teton, Yellowstone, and Glacier. Tahoe was our halfway mark, and our time for rest. We took rest very seriously, and ended up barely leaving our cabin all week. We were beat.

For Thanksgiving this year, we returned to Tahoe for a couple of days with good friends. And on this short time here, I actually went out and took some pictures.

This was a two-day trip for us, so I only had a few opportunities to shoot. While it’s always awesome to wait for perfect conditions and lighting, or have plenty of time to travel around and hit epic locations, the short time meant we had to choose a few spots and accept whatever conditions were there. For the first evening, we chose Secret Cove. We were not disappointed.

It felt like the real magic started happening after the sun disappeared behind the Sierra’s. I’ve never been one to chase a lot of purple in the sky, but this was sometime else. My friend Jesse has been recently learning photography, and it was awesome sharing moments like this.

The next morning, we headed to Bonsai Rock for a sunrise. This is more famously a sunset location, but it was close by and I wanted some background morning light on the mountains. The hike at Secret Cove was fairly steep, but the hike down to Bonsai Rock was incredibly steep. It was also icy. It took our crew a bit to safely make it down, but once we did we had the shoreline all to ourselves. Incredible morning.

While it had snowed around Tahoe already, much of the snow had already melted except what was in high elevations. Of course the snow would soon be returning, but I had always envisioned a Christmasy-photo with the beautiful pines in the Sierra’s, and a snowy landscape. We drove a short distance into some higher elevation and found a frozen river. We threw some lights on the tree, and did a quick light-painting after the sun went down.

Tahoe is awesome in the fall, and Thanksgiving here with our crew was perfect. And now that Thanksgiving is over and Christmas is here, I’ve got some very cool winter shoots planned. Keep following along to see it all unfold.