Bluebonnets, Family Photos, and Parking Tickets. Anything to get the Picture!

Bluebonnet family photos in Texas are very popular in April. The flowers are so beautiful and so many people want a photo of their family sitting peacefully nestled amongst the Bluebonnets. Probably many of you reading this have the very picture I’m speaking of, right?

So I set off with the Nelson family to try to capture that exact picture. The only bluebonnets close to my house (as far as I know) are blooming beautifully just south of where I live. Unfortunately, they are smack in the middle of a median on one of the busier roads in my neighborhood.

This particular road has some really convenient turn arounds all along the street. Nice, wide roads where you can make a u-turn every block or so. It seeemed like the perfect place to park your car, hop out, and take a few pictures in the bluebonnets, don’t you think?

Well…that is exactly what I thought when I scheduled to meet this family at one of these turn arounds. We carefully pulled our cars off to the side, sort of up on the sidewalk so we wouldn’t be impeding any traffic that was actually turning around and not stopping for pictures.

The problem was that we were not the only ones with this brilliant idea. When I pulled up at 6:00 and saw so many people up there trying to find the perfect spot for photos, I wondered where we would be able to find a spot to accommodate this extended family of eight I was about to try to photograph.

About 15 minutes in to this bluebonnet session, on a crazy, busy median, on the windiest day of the month, I’m thinking about the editing nightmare this gallery will be because of all the blowing hair and the people that were photobombing every shot. Hair & photo bombers weren’t going to be the only nightmare…

As we were moving spots to try and get some shots of just the kids without people in the background, we noticed flashing lights. Yep…the police had arrived at the hottest bluebonnet spot in the neighborhood, and they were not happy with all the cars parked along the turn around. We were told to move our cars or we would be ticketed and maybe towed.

Well…I wasn’t willing to risk that. I wasn’t willing to spend $250 to pick up my car from the towing company and then pay a parking ticket on top of that. I hoped that we had gotten at least one decent bluebonnet picture in the 15 minutes we had been trying, because I was ready to move on.

Between the crazy, gale force winds, the throngs of people squishing all the bluebonnets, and now the police on our case threatening to tow our cars, I was not hopeful for how this session would turn out.

So we packed up all my gear, and we all jumped into our cars and headed off to another location. And if you ask me, I thought the second location was much more relaxing than the bluebonnet field. The wind was minimal, and there were only a handful of people in the area where we were shooting. I didn’t even have to crop any people out of these photos!

What I thought was going to be a total bust and something that would ruin this family’s photo session with me, in my mind, turned out to be a blessing in disguise! I had a wonderful evening with this family. They handled the chaos so well, and did not seem bothered by it at all. They just rolled with all the punches, and we had a great time and got some really cute pictures.

I think if I end up doing bluebonnet photos again next year, I might do some research on the best fields for pictures that aren’t in the middle of a very busy median. Less stress I’m sure, and probably much better parking options.

Guess we’ll see next year when the bluebonnets return! If I can help you out with family photos, you can find me over at Paula Mason Photography.

Until next time…