Before you get engrossed with Black Friday and all the sales and bargains, finalize your plans for this years photo greeting card. Talk to your photo buddies and schedule for one of them to come take your family picture.

No photo buddies? Lots of local photographers have special deals this time of year to take a family portrait for your photo greeting cards. Shooting this yourself is a bit difficult since you have to use a self timer or remote device and run a lot.

This weekend many families are coming together for some kind of turkey fest. Wouldn’t it be a great time to take a family photo?

Outdoor photos are quite popular here in Colorado, especially if you can get a nice snow scene in the background. If you have a favorite park, beach, mountain, lake, stream etc you frequent, these are great places to shoot the photos at.

Some folks are lucky enough to have a nice setting in their own backyard. Or you may want to gather around the recently setup Christmas tree. Be sure to check out your local city’s downtown area. A good photo spot could be built for you already.

Lots of photo labs do greeting cards, and most of them deliver within a few days. Your local Ritz and Wolf Camera stores would be my first choice, even though Wal-Mart and other stores do them too. Better image quality will impress your friends (and make you look better too). If you want to make your own cards, check out Photographers Edge. They sell standard horizontal or vertical cards that you slip a 4×6 print into. Nice stuff and reasonably priced.

And virtually all the online labs do them too. The important thing is to get the photo done soon before you get all flustered with holiday doings.