The story
behind the pictures

 

 In this one neighborhood alone, the gifts would crush a sled,

 and our chimney? Isn't big enough! (for someone's head!)

From the author -

"Many children find the likelihood of Santa's trips down the chimney hard to imagine - but to my way of thinking, it would be far easier for a well-fed Santa to twist himself through a narrow and sooty passage than it was for me to try to illustrate the I BELIEVE IN SANTA CLAUS book.  My hapless attempts included searching the internet for free clipart, tracing pictures with a digital pen, and trolling for help from anyone who was said to be able to draw. (Some could, many others couldn't, but no one was less well equipped for the task than I.)

"Then I discovered the (literally) millions of photos on the website shutterstock.com, at about the same time that I completed a several hour "boot camp" course in Adobe® Photoshop®. With some extra help from my expert camp instructor, Tim Arroyo, I discovered how to slice, crop, merge, blend, color and paste photos together.The result is the detailed collages that now illustrate the pages of I BELIEVE IN SANTA CLAUS. .

"I also am indebted to my friend, artist/photographer Jeff Lion Weinstock, who is not only extraordinarily talented (see his website, http://jefflionweinstock.com) but also was kind enough to tell me the truth about my first efforts. Victimized by my own haste, incompetence, and ignorance, I had made some extremely bad choices.  For example, the illustrations for "make it," "pack it" "and deliver" were initially illustrated by photos of a maintenance man, a UPS delivery person, and a 16-wheeler truck. Jeff gently let me know that every picture should tell a story, and, thanks to his advice, the pictures now have a narrative of their own, to match the poem.

"I additionally owe a great deal to my daughter Caroline, who made important suggestions that helped me create some consistency out of the very different visual and photographic styles of the dozens of artists whose work I used.

"Midway through the work, which was extensive, shuitterstock.com revised its licensing rules to require that photo credits appear for every photo used. Blessedly, this provision does not apply to the scores of photos I downloaded before the rules change - otherwise, the text for credits would probably have more than doubled the book's page count with the inclusion of hundreds of lines of small print.  For example, the image on this page uses work from photographers who created photos of the table, the card, the candy dish, the Victorian Santa postcard, the frame, the red bow, the baby with the white dog, the couple with the black dog, the man with the other dog, the Yorkie terrier, and the street itself, which in its original version was without people or animals. I also had to add a sweatshirt to the man on the stairs - that couple was originally walking on a beach, and not dressed for the cold weather scene I wished to depict. In deference to shutterstock.com, the shutterstock.com's ID numbers and descriptions of all the photos I downloaded are now posted here, on this site; I hope that the matchups will not be too difficult to appropriately honor the artists whose work enhanced this book. I am grateful to them, to Caroline, Jeff and Tim, and to everyone and everything that helped me uncover an artistic interest I never knew I could possess. Truly a Christmas miracle!"

-Elizabeth Van Ness

 Yes, it seems impossible, the things he's said to do...

 but in this world, we've often found that miracles are true!