Skinnylaminxenstein: Sharing the load

This week is super busy for us, as we spend two solid days shooting our new fabric and 2017 Lookbook, which we’ll be launching in May. The shoot is a huge amount of work – not only the days themselves, but all the weeks of planning and organising leading up to it.

Here’s a peek behind the scenes of what we got up to on our first shoot day yesterday (carefully-sifted for inadvertent sneak peeks of the new fabric).

The Skinny laMinx team – Melissa, Laura and Janine – were incredibly organised ahead of time, managing timing and absorbing glitches and hitches on the day like true professionals. We brought in Charl Edwards to act as Art Director, and Inge Prins as our photographer, and both of them have been a pleasure to work with too: focussed, flexible committed, detail-orientated, and always up for a laugh.

The intensity of a shoot is incredible – it’s constant forward motion, with the eye in eagle mode, feeling the intense need for a bare inch to the left, spotting the slightest shift in the light… and then there’s the magic of seeing something better than you could have imagined appear on the screen. All the labour and planning leading up to it, and the whole-body pain at the end of the day are totally worth it for the pleasure of getting the shot just right.

It’s hard to believe that not too long ago, it was just me doing everything on our shoots, acting as art director, photographer, labourer, designer, post-production and PR and marketing. I’m still not sure how I managed to hold reflector boards AND take a picture at once, but I think my body used to be a lot more flexible 🙂

That kind of intensity is different, and I’m glad I did it. It’s a kind of a badge of honour that a lot of small business owners wear, and I must admit that I sort of miss being so essential to every single thing. I mean, everything on yesterday’s shoot was so delegated, I started to feel a little superfluous!

But the fact is, it’s impossible to be good at it all, no matter how hard you try. It worked for a while, but the business has outgrown my skillset, and I need to move ahead. These days, the skill that is much more useful from me than juggling cameras and reflector boards is the skill of delegation. Does that sound like a boring thing? I don’t know: when I felt the effects of good delegation at yesterday’s shoot, it felt anything but boring. It felt enabling and energising, and so, so satisfying to see people do things to the best of their ability, producing beautiful results. I think effective delegation is what the skill that will keep me inspired to keep hammering away at this project of mine. I’m interested to see what happens next.

Next shoot is on Thursday. Look out for more sneak peeks on Instagram under the tag #skinnyroofgarden!

Want to know more about why this post is filed under “Skinnylaminxenstein”? Read here.