Own Your Zone of Genius
Own your zone
The best results come from collaborations in which you let the creatives be the experts in their own “zones of genius” (assuming of course you carefully selected your experts—do your homework!). In a project or a shoot, give your fellow collaborators as many details as possible. They may think of things pertaining to their expertise that you hadn’t thought of that will lead to an even better outcome. You can control the general direction while giving others the freedom to shine in their gift. I find this to be particularly important when working with photographers.
Due to time constraints on the peony shoot this past summer (get the details), we were unable to document the bloom types and we ran out of time to shoot a couple of the linens from Nuage Designs. So, after the shoot in the studio, I took everything to my parents house to attempt my own documentation with my vintage Nikon film camera. I’ve shared a few of my images below.
As you can see, they are not nearly as good as the imagery from the professional photographer, Jennefer Wilson. Actually, by themselves, maybe you would be impressed. But because I started this post with Jennefer’s images, you can see the glaring difference in all around quality. I am not a photographer. I have not been trained to use a camera, I have not put in hundreds of hours practicing, and I do not know how to properly edit. The alternative though in this case was not having any imagery of the individual peonies generously provided by the Alaska Peony Cooperative and not having any documentation of the other linens. So, I decided to try.
I have seen beautiful flower arrangements in real life turn absolutely blah in a photo and very mediocre arrangements appear fabulous because of the skill of the photographer to record them at just the right angle and light.
In the end, I’m glad I recorded the individual peony varieties because those images are good enough for documentation purposes, but the images I took of the arrangements I tossed together for the two linens are probably not going to be shared outside of this post. Still, it was a good reminder for me that I cannot be an expert in everything, as much as I’d like to be. Moreover, we rob others of the joy of their calling if we try to be everything.
Can we afford an expert in every part of our lives that we aren’t ourselves brilliant at? or in areas we don’t have time for? No. That’s for billionaires. The rest of us have to prioritize and choose when/where to spend our limited resources on the experts and when to swallow our pride, do the best we can, and move on. I’m preaching to myself here.
Where do you prioritizing outsourcing in your life? The next expert I want to hire is a house cleaner 🙌🏻
Bisous,
Emily