Albion Basin is one of our all time favorite and most requested locations, so it was more than time to do a blog post about it! The stunning wildflowers and rolling hills offer an absolutely unmatched view, but there are some things you’ll need to know before scheduling your portrait session there. Ready? Here we go!

Your Albion Basin portrait session will need to be scheduled at sunrise or sunset to have the best light. The state park no longer allows more cars to drive up than there are parking spots, so if you arrive and the parking lot for Albion Basin is full, you will have to wait at the fee booth in order to go up. They don’t let cars go up and circle around because they don’t want to have traffic congestion and frustration up the canyon. For this reason, we suggest arriving to your session 60-90 minutes early (BEFORE your start time) just in case you have to wait in line. This is another reason why we suggest choosing a sunrise session over any other time of day, because it is going to be the least busy. When we do portrait sessions here, we do require a full session (60 minutes) to make your drive worth the time that you may potentially spend waiting for a parking spot.

In the past, there was a HIGH permit fee in order to schedule a session at Albion Basin, due to damage to the wildflowers. Last year, they removed this fee and added photo platforms and a roped off path in order to help keep the wildlife natural.

The wildflowers do change throughout the weeks of being in bloom, but honestly they are all beautiful and you can’t pick a bad time. Like we mentioned before, there are some photo platforms and paths created that we will work around to make the illusion of you being in the wildflower fields, but we will not cross the ropes or go off the path because we love Albion Basin and want to be able to continue to shoot there without high permit fees.

The views at Albion Basin are stunning, even when the wildflowers aren’t in season, and we absolutely love this location. If you’re interested in scheduling your family portrait session here, mention Albion Basin in your contact form.

One fun thing about this session is that Saige was actually pregnant during these portraits, but they weren’t telling anyone, so this was really really fun to get to do!