Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park

Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, California is a black and white photograph taken by Ansel Adams, c. 1937.

This became the most famous photograph taken by Adams at the Yosemite National Park, depicting several natural landmarks visible from that view point, namely El Capitan, Bridalveil Falls, Cathedral Rocks, and Half Dome, seen at the left, all of which also appear in other of his pictures.

[1] Adams stated that “While living in Yosemite I had great opportunity to follow the light and the storms, hoping always to encounter exciting situations.

There were hundreds of spectacular weather events over the years, but the opportunities to photograph them were limited by accidents of time and place...”[2] Adams took the picture on a December, possibly in 1937, just as a rain turned snow storm was beginning to clear away.

He explained that his viewpoint had been motivated in part by the landscape: "At this location one cannot move more than a hundred feet or so to the left without reaching the edge of the almost perpendicular cliffs above the Merced River.