“Your holiday to-do list is long: gifts, cards, food, décor, activities before, during, and after each holiday. It’s a long season, and yet it seems to fly by in an instant, leaving you standing in January like the John Travolta Pulp Fiction meme, looking and feeling kind of lost and wondering what happened.”

This is the first paragraph for an article I wrote for Richmond Family Magazine. The article, “Big-Picture Strategies for Preserving Holiday Magic: Pro Tips for Capturing Holiday Memories” was published in RFM’s November/December issue, as part of their holiday issue. (Here’s a link to the article.)

I’ve written tips for the holidays before, like how to hire a professional photographer to document your holidays, how to get extended family photos made quickly and easily during Thanksgiving weekend, and ideas for non-cheesy holiday photo gifts.

But this might be the first time I’ve written extensively about how to DIY your photos for the holidays. About how to get into the photos (yes, you need to get into the photos). About how to not spend your entire holiday season worrying about how to take and get into photos.

The article starts with planning ahead, goes through pro tips for taking photos at home, argues about getting into photos (here’s why you should get into photos), reminds you that you need to do something with the photos (aka print them) afterwards, and ends with an “oh yeah -” to also get that classic Everybody Looking at the Camera group photo.

I wrote this article for RFM back in the summer, when most people were at on vacation and thinking about fireworks and bug spray, not gingerbread houses and twinkly lights. It was a labor of love, and fun for my first published article to be focused (pun intended) on how to help you have the best holidays, and remember them afterwards fondly with photos.

I didn’t expect to find my tips highlighted on the cover of the magazine, especially alongside an article about Mending Walls (one of my favorite local projects). That was a fun surprise.

Big-Picture Strategies for Preserving Holiday Magic, the article I wrote for Richmond Family Magazine’s November and December issue, is live, both online and in print. You can find Richmond Family Magazine for free at most local grocery stores, and lots of local shops and public spaces in the area. Go read it before the holidays!