Photoshoots are really important. Photoshoots are a complete pain. When we first started a couple years ago, we had no clue what it took to have a successful photoshoot. I planned absolutely nothing. I figured the photographer would show up to my parents' house, we would go out to the backyard, snap a few pics, and boom - there's our content! Well, I was wrong about that and everything went wrong. As we have grown, we have changed our approach. The team plans and plans and plans, and then we leave it to our man Garrett (@shortstache on Instagram) to do what he does best. But stuff still goes wrong. Here's some behind the scenes.

We chose to shoot part of our Fall campaign in Chicago to show versatility and branch out a little from home base. We shot in April, and we were worried it would be too hot. Luckily, Chicago didn't disappoint and it was absolutely freezing, windy, and raining.

Linda (Director of Product Development and basically our fourth sister) takes a lot of abuse as the day gets longer.

After a long Day 1, we went out to dinner to unwind a bit. We ended up unwinding quite a bit and went out all night.

Some people were still trying to be professional.

But Day 2 probably wasn't as productive as Day 1 was.

Some more pics from that long Night 1.

We grew up hanging out at our Uncle Doug's (aka Diddy) farm, and it's incredible. An hour away from St. Louis, but it feels like you're in another world. He and Aunt Molly were nice enough to let us use it for the shoot. We will see if they allow it again...

Ok so these pictures were tough to look at for a while. We had meeting after meeting about Diddy's farm, and the one rule was "WHEN WE LEAVE THE FARM, IT'S GOING TO BE BETTER THAN THE WAY WE FOUND IT." I still have nightmares about these pictures (above and below). But basically, we had a bonfire scene set up. The pit was on very dry grass and the heat sparked a flame and 2 seconds later it looked like a field was on fire with smoke everywhere. We floored it over there and I literally thought we were going to burn Diddy's farm down to the ground. The flames were getting close to the tree line and to the refurbished VERY EXPENSIVE Bronco that was loaned to us. Thank God, my mom told us to pack a Pendleton blanket. We were draped in that thing jumping on flames like maniacs. After about 20 minutes, we put it out.   

The Fire Department finally got out there with what seemed to be a toy truck. So it's good we had already put out the flames.

I called Uncle Diddy. I was a nervous wreck, but he couldn't have been cooler...and the shoot went on.

Everyone rebounded, and we got some good shots, as you can see (above and below). Oh, and all the grass grew right back.

We thought we were going to keep our dogs clean and groomed for the shoot. That clearly didn’t last long.

Our youngest brother Marco got involved, and he stole the show.

The amazing camera crew doing their thing to get the best shots.

Even though there were some mishaps, I'm super proud of our team and what we were able to accomplish on this shoot.