Several years ago, in between two major Santa photography days, Santa Matty went skydiving. Now I used to fly airplanes, big ones, having logged over 12,000 hours. I've done rolls, spins, loops, and emmilmans, etc., but you will not catch me jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. So the thought of Santa jumping out of an airplane for fun, when I had children waiting to see him, sent a chill down my spinal cord. That's when I started looking for back-up Santa's, just in case. I met Santa Dallas at Roots Tech when he appeared at my booth. He was a friend of Matty's and stopped to look at the Santa portraits I had hanging on display. I invited him down for a photo shoot in the outfit he was wearing that day, a dark suit and vest with a derby on top. It was classy and I wanted to photograph him. Afterwards I took him out to lunch to show my appreciation and to talk to him about our Storybook Santa Experience. He was very much interested, but it was difficult to find a spot for him at the time. This year I pushed the schedule one week earlier and at the suggestion of Santa Matty asked Dallas to participate on that day. Santa Dallas was more than happy to work the first day. He came down to the studio for a website portrait and we were off and running. He will be a great addition to the team. I'm excited to work with him and best of all enjoy the peace of knowing I have a spare Santa backing us up during the busiest time of the year!

If you would like to know more about our Storybook Santa Experience click here.