Taking a morning off to do a quiet walk and take my mind off the horrible state of the world...

So much bad news everywhere and so little I can do about it. I needed to avoid the internet, avoid my TV news and disconnect. One way that's good for me is to take a walk by myself and take a camera along to keep my fingers and part of my brain occupied. 

I've been playing with the Sigma fp for the last couple of days and thought it would be nice to see how the Sigma 24mm f3.5 works with that camera. At least I don't have to manually focus it on the rear screen to make it all work in the bright sun...

We had a wild rain storm last night, just after midnight. Huge wind gusts. Horizontal rain. Hail whipped sideways. In central Texas a fast moving cold front like that usually brings cool dry air and puffy clouds the next day. It made this morning's clouds look wonderful.

Camera set to ISO 100. Aperture set to f8.0. WB = sun icon. Shutter speed? The camera's choice. 

An old train engine waiting its turn next to the Amtrak station.

Going nowhere as slowly as possible.

With the Sigma fp you actually have a choice of raw file sizes. You can shoot at highest quality (6000x4000 in 14 bit) or you can shoot at a lower res (2000x3000)  but with 12 bits. I never tried the lower res version before so today was the day for experimenting. They all look good to me. 

24mm is about as wide as I ever like to go. I've got two lenses that are marginally wider. They don't see as much use. 

 That's all I've got for today. 

The real reason to use one camera over another. My on and off love affair with a quirky but magnificent image maker.

 This has been a good month for portrait assignments. Last week I did portraits of five staff members from a legal defense non-profit, outside. I made portraits of three healthcare professionals in the studio. We had fun making portraits of three attorneys. The majority of the projects were environmental portraits where we're shooting with landscape in the background or, in the case of our attorney clients, with their very interesting office architecture in the background. The thing that interests me in these different projects is how untethered I am to using only one particular camera. 

Three of the portraits were done in my studio, using electronic flash. For those I defaulted to the most obvious camera (for me, in the studio) the Panasonic S5 along with the Sigma 90mm f2.8 Contemporary lens. The menus are straightforward, the face and eye detection works well, the raw files are easy to work with and it's straightforwardness is just a way to simplify the process. Some of of the outdoor portraits were done with a Leica SL2 along with the Panasonic S-Pro 70-200mm lens. 

I like using that camera (SL2) for outdoor work because it delivers a wide dynamic range in the raw photographs and the higher res files make retouching fly-away hair easier. The color is great and I can use dumb flash triggers with the camera all day long which makes lighting with a Godox AD200 Pro flash a piece of cake. My biggest worry on those shoots is bringing enough sandbags along so that the modifier I use on a light stand to block direct sun doesn't fall over in the wind and conk someone on the head. 

On one engagement with lawyers in a conference room with a big, dappled glass wall I had the odd idea to use the GHii and the 40-150mm f4.0 Olympus Pro lens. But for the life of me I can't tell you what made me decide to use that combo as it ticks a lot of the wrong boxes for interior portrait shooting. I was using LED lights and needed ISO 800 for my preferred shutter speed/aperture combination so you've gotta figure that the files will have more noise in them and also, no matter how much progress has been made, you know that the dynamic range isn't going to match either of the full frame cameras I mentioned. It wasn't really an issue. The images turned out just fine. But it was one of those "tempting fate" or "tempting Murphy's law" episodes in my sporadic/erratic approach to matching cameras with assignments. 

Yesterday afternoon we were back in the studio photographing a radiologist with the S5 and the flashes. Just trying to bring some continuity to the studio stuff we've already shot for that client... But after I finished and sent the doctor on his way with a bottle of water and my best wishes I started the process of deciding just what I really, really wanted to take to a portrait session at one of my favorite law offices the next morning (today). 

Recently I've been shooting some of my own personal work with a camera that I've kept circling back to again and again over the past two or three years. That's the Sigma fp. A camera with a deck almost fully stacked against it for easy work but a camera that has one great trick up its proverbial sleeve. 

What's the trick? Well, it just has better looking files than any other camera I own --- at any price. That's a pretty neat trick, right? It doesn't have a built in EVF. There's recently released, add-on EVF but it's kludgy and ergonomically a non-starter. The fp doesn't sync with flash at any speed faster than 1/30th of a second and, if you use the highest quality raw file setting (14 bit), the fastest flash sync speed sinks down to a miserable 1/15th of a second. The focusing mechanism is strictly the much maligned contrast detect AF only. And yet.....the files. In either Jpeg or Raw. The best I've ever gotten out of a digital camera. Ever. 

I hate using it as a street camera in bright sunlight. The files are amazing but your operational choices are either to squint and hold your hand over the top of the rear screen to try (in vain, mostly) to see the edges of your frame or any details at all, or, to use the Sigma Loupe which is, by volume, bigger than the camera itself. I don't mind sporting the loupe for sunny day shots for clients but it's a major burden when pressed into use for street photography...and you are just out for the fun of it.

So...who would put up with all the knocks on this camera instead of buying a "safe" and somewhat reliable Sony or Canon or Nikon? Or Leica for that matter? I guess it would be someone who really likes the look of the files and is willing to forgo comfort, convenience and logical workflows to get the good stuff. 

No. Not the "good stuff." The great stuff. 

When I shoot environmental portraits for the law firm I visited this morning I always light the portraits with LED fixtures. I find it easier to match the quantity and quality of my light with the existing light. And it's the existing light in the backgrounds that really makes this happy work for me. 

I've done nearly 100 portraits for the firm over the course of the last four years. Sometimes two portraits in a visit and sometimes just one. They don't wait for numbers to stack up before they call. When they hire a new associate or recruit a new partner they just call and schedule a session. If we can do two people on the same visit they save a little bit of money. But my feeling is that the savings is very secondary, in their calculus, compared to their opportunity to send out some P.R. about their new hires. Since I've photographed in their space so often there are few surprises when it comes to lighting and imaging so I feel free to bring along whatever camera catches my attention in the days leading up to an appointment.

For some reason, maybe because of recent images made with it, the Sigma fp just seemed so right. 

I packed a lighting case with two big COB Godox LEDs, light stands, a 60 inch umbrella, a round diffuser to cut light pouring down from ceiling cans, and a tripod. I stuck that case in the car along with a collapsible cart the night before. Then I turned to the camera backpack. 

I knew from experience that I'd want a fast, sharp lens to drop the backgrounds out of focus so I chose the Sigma 85mm Art lens as my pick for the photos. On this location there are no room constraints so I can move closer or further away from my subject to get the framing I want. I know the 85mm is going to be in the ballpark and I like to compose just a bit looser than usual so I can crop where necessary or have extra frame space if I need to use transforms to correct a slanting vertical in the background. 

I put the lens on the Sigma fp, fired up the camera and set as many of the parameters as I could remember needing to set for the next day before formatting the SD card, attaching the ponderous rear screen loupe and then putting the whole assemblage into the backpack. I also packed a small set of white balance targets and a light meter. Even though the offices of the client are only five or six miles from my office I went ahead and packed a backup camera --- just in case. But I went off "script" again and instead of packing another full frame camera I ended up putting the 56mm Sigma Contemporary lens on the Leica CL and dropping that into the case.  My logic? They are both L mount cameras. They both take the same tiny, nearly worthless batteries. The can, in a pinch, use each other's lenses. The CL is also light and takes up very little space in the case. 

Since fate is fickle I tossed in four or five extra batteries. 

That case I brought into the house last night for safe keeping. I grabbed it on the way out of the house this morning on my way to swim practice. All the gear sat safely in my car at the swim club while I cheerfully pounded out some nice yardage with swim friends I've swum with for well over 20 years. It's nice. I also used the new, "Don't try too hard" method of relaxing more in the water. It worked well. 

After a quick shower I headed downtown to the office building H.Q. of my client. I pulled into the parking garage, set up my cart and dragged out the photo luggage. 

Love the cart. It's added years to my photography by keeping my back happy. Everyone should have a cart. Airlines should check your carts for free. Every office building should have carts in their parking garages just for visiting photographers....

From the parking garage lobby one goes right into the building proper. I always forget which floor of the high rise I'm headed to but the security guy at the front desk knows about my brain's ability to block that particular number so he always prompts me when I get there. 

When I get up to the floor I more or less take charge. I decide where I'd like to shoot and look for client agreement. I chat with the reception person as I set up in the corner of their nice, big lobby. She's sweet and always offers me coffee. The location is a corner where I can look down a long hallway that has floor to ceiling windows all the way down one side. But the windows are frosted and tinted and broken up by various horizontal and vertical lines, and doorways, and crown moulding. This is my favorite background at that location. And I use it as well as I can. And as often as I can.

Today I started by setting up the Sigma camera on a tripod. I dragged out a high-backed chair from a conference room and set it up as my "anchor"; my point of reference for the framing and the lighting. I also use a chair as an anchor for my photo subject. I place them behind the chair using the top of the back as a place for them to rest their hands. The seat of the chair faces me and they are behind the chair nestled up to the back. It works well psychologically because it creates a good barrier between us which adds to their feeling of safety, personal space and well being. I have to confess that with some subjects it provides comfort for me as well. 

The chair as as "podium" give the subject a place certain in which to stand which makes my job of lighting much easier. They don't move around as much. The subject position in relation to the background and in relation to the camera are the keys things of importance to me. Too far from the subject and the background becomes too focused. Too close the subject and I don't get the human perspective I want for this client's brand "feel." 

Once I've got the geometry worked out I set up a round diffusion disk directly over the top of where the subject will stand. This kills the wretched downlight from ceiling cans that is the hallmark of bad "available light" portraits in commercial settings. Now you control the main light. Which, for me, is a 60 inch, white satin umbrella used about four feet from my subject's face. I'm using a Godox SL150ii LED light bounced into the umbrella and it creates a sweet, soft but still directional light that's just right for people's faces. 

Today, when I looked through the camera at the person I was there to photograph I could instantly tell that I would not need or want additional backlighting. I'd depend on the light coming through the walls of windows behind her. It was obvious.

Before the subject arrives and steps into the space I've created I take an incident light meter reading and transfer the reading to my camera. Then I hang a gray target on the top of the chair, in the same light that will illuminate my subject's face, and make a custom white balance reading. When I've set all the parameters I ask the reception person to alert our person that we're ready. 

I've worked with so many cameras over the years so I was a little surprised when my subject stepped into our set and faced the camera. Looking through the giant loupe at the back screen showed me a frame that was well lit but more importantly the camera absolutely nailed the flesh tone, the white balance on my subject's skin, and the subject-to-background distance was just what I wanted. 

I shot about seventy shots with the Sigma fp taking time to move the camera so the subject was in front of slightly different parts of the background scene. I would figure out in post what the best position was but these were little changes, not big, profound moves. After I was certain I had exactly what I needed I asked the sitter if she had time to indulge me in a little camera test. She did. 

I pulled out the Leica CL and the 56mm Sigma lens. I'd set it up identically to the fp. We shot another 20 or 30 frames and then I called an end to the session and thanked by subject profusely. She seemed to have a good time and left smiling. 

Then we came to the part of every shoot that I don't like. I had to pack everything back up, get it back on the cart and drag everything back to the parking garage for the ten minute trip back home. 

My real excitement vis-a-vis this shoot was in the first stages of post processing where I do global corrections to the groups of frames. One correction for the Sigma and a second correction for the Leica. The fp files were so superior. It was just stunning. Perfectly sharp details with almost luxurious skin tones. And color I could write a whole blog about. The files from the fp just made those from the CL look...shabby. 

After I pulled in the images and did preliminary corrections in Lightroom I output them as high res, full  size Jpegs and uploaded them to safe keeping on the cloud. And into a gallery for the client's selection. 

Only then did I pull the rest of the gear from the car and start putting everything back into the right spots in the studio. 

The files from the Sigma fp have now printed the idea onto my brain that its color science and sensor are the best I've seen for this kind of work. No matter how silly or dysfunctional the rest of the camera might be it is vindicated by doing the one thing photographers say it most important to them = the image quality. The  image quality divorced from all the clutter. No one should care how fast the frame rates are, how easily the camera locks onto an object, how it communicates with one's precious phone. Nope. Everyone pays lip service to the idea image quality is the goal. Well.....toss the rest of the stuff in the trash can because, at least for today, my Sigma fp rules the location. 

Not by having the best battery life, or the best performance tracking pigeons but by having colors that make one think they are looking into the actual scene and not just looking at another picture on a screen. 

And that's what I did for work today. 

the 21mm f1.5 TTartisan lens is very, very nice. I'm keeping mine. Oh. And by the way --- we just hit the 29,000,000 page view mark.

 

 Don't know about you but I'm happy and impressed to find that we've had twenty nine million page views over the years. Those are counted by Google as visits directly to the site and does not include numbers from feeds, etc. I'll take it. "Sitting on the wall for a 50...."

Sunday afternoon strolling through Austin with a Sigma fp and not trying too hard to not try too hard...

I mentioned Sigma fp cameras the other day and that got me thinking that it had been long time since I tossed a battery in my fp and took it out for a spin. I've always loved the sharpness and the colors in the fp files and thought a nice way to relax and be calm would be to put a 45mm f2.8 on it and spend some quality time meandering around the central axis of the city. 

It was one of those days when I felt like I might want some options in the middle of the walk so I did something I rarely do; I took the smallest Domke camera bag off the hook in the equipment closet and loaded it up with a couple extra batteries (the Sigma likes to chew on batteries....) the small Sigma 24mm f3.5, an ancient Canon 50mm f1.8 FD lens+L adapter, the Leica TL2 (which I am trying hard....but not too hard...to enjoy more) the TTartisan 23mm f1.4 for the TL2 and some extra batteries for that camera as well. Since I was going to carry the bag anyway I thought I may as well also toss in my phone. I usually leave it in the car but I thought the Apple Pay feature might come in handy for some contactless consumerism. 

Of course I had overpacked and only used the Sigma fp and the 45 for the entire afternoon. I broke no new ground but I did have fun composing on the rear screen of the camera and letting myself slip into "dirty baby diaper hold" without feeling much shame or guilt. It's so funny. The TL2 probably has the better interface but I immediately took to the Sigma fp when I started using it while getting comfortable with the TL2 has been harder than I would have imagined. It did serve to help weigh the camera bag down and prevent it from blowing around in the breeze...

One thing I notice when using the Sigma fp without the big loupe for the rear screen is that I feel like such a goofy amateur standing around staring at the back of the camera that I don't even try to be quick and cool with my shooting but stand there moving the camera around a couple feet in front of my face until such a time as I feel the composition is just right. Now, in the comfort of my office, it's embarrassing how quickly I switched from "pro mode" to gleeful hobbyist. But I do have to say that it's pretty much fun to not have to act the part. 

Two people with bigger cameras than mine stopped to chat and give me a few "pointers" about doing "street photography." They were very earnest. They also pointed out places in the area I could go to get good shots. I guess they presumed that anyone looking at a rear screen needed some extra help. I thanked them and continued on. 

The fp is a fascinating camera in that it is perfunctory to use but then surprises one with wonderful, rich and highly detailed files. I gave up shooting in the square and reverted to 3:2 with the idea that if one of the frames needed to be cropped or converted to black and white I could just suck it up and do that in post. 

All in all it was a fun time out on the streets today. This is UT's graduation weekend so there were lots of graduates and their families out socializing and celebrating this weekend. Odd to see formal wear in burnt orange.... On to the images and their captions.

I have to admit that I'm a sucker for saturated colors.

Angry looking giant rabbit in front of the candy shop on West 2nd St. 

He's been there for years. Today is the first day I really found him to be threatening. 

Maybe it was something about the 45mm lens.

A new clothing store for women opened this week on 2nd. I have high hopes for their 

window design/merchandizing. 

I was on Congress Ave. and I found a wall of posters. Several were for a Tony Hawk movie.

He's a very, very famous skateboarder. Just by chance, as I got ready to click the shutter

this young man came speeding by on his board.

Private parties galore at the rental space at 8th and Congress. 

We were there last week for a fund-raiser. It looked totally different. 

And much less tacky. 

Remember back in the film days when you had a camera and there was an unfinished roll of film in it but you had no idea what was on the film? Well, when I picked up the fp today there was stuff on the memory card and I found I liked a bunch of the frames so I didn't reformat the card. This image of my

friend James is from weeks ago at the CookBook Cafe. Yeah. He's a great guy even if he 

does shoot with Sony....

I used to own an Element. Funny to think that was four cars back.

My friend Ellis still owns one. I wonder what he'll decide on next. 

Loved mine until the road noise got to me.... perfect interior space for a photographer. 

A second attempt. Nice colors.

Does the fp do "wide dynamic range?" You bet your ass it does. 

These images showed black in the interior, through the open window. 

A little judicious nudge of the shadow slider in raw opened up the 

interior to the point that it looked lit. Amazing. 

Wonders never cease in Austin. This is an autonomous food delivery robot. 

It was waiting patiently at the crosswalk. I decided to leverage my inconsistent 

humanity and jaywalk just to see if I could goad the device into cheating....

Next light rail train due? In hours and hours and hours.

This is Texas. We're still not good at all when it comes to 

mass transport.... God made Texas big so we could keep building parking lots.

Artistic interpretation of concrete.

The "just out of camera" look of fp black and white is pretty nice. 

Last shot of the day. A visual comment on the human condition. 

We're alone most of the time. Even when we're surrounded by people.

 

Discontinued cameras. My nemesis.

 

Sadly, the camera in this photograph just got discontinued. 

for most brands that might mean a drop in price. 

It's a Leica so it will first become scarce and then ramp up in price.

Sad...I wanted to buy a second one brand new. They're mostly gone.

News flash! I have always been a very anxious person. I think it's mostly hereditary but one never really knows. Sometimes my anxiety is almost completely under control for years at a time. Once in a while it surfaces at inconvenient times. One source of psychological discomfort is when "performance anxiety" bubbles up and interferes with my enjoyment of swim practice. This happens more than I'd like. If I swim in a very competitive lane my dysfunctional psychology places a great emphasis on the "vital importance" of maintaining a fast pace throughout. Of keeping up.  Put me at the head of a fast lane, having to keep track of intervals and setting the pace, and I can feel the ramp up of my anxiety symptoms almost instantly. My breathing gets more difficult, my heart races, my muscles get really tense, etc. It's the classic "fight or flight" response to self-imposed stress. And it's been this way, on and off, for as long as I can remember. It's an incredibly tiring way to swim...

The funny thing is that at swim practice no one is keeping score, no one is shaming slower swimmers, no one expects you to be at the top of your game every time you get in the water. But my brain isn't buying the safe space concept.

I talked to a psychiatrist about it at one point. He asked which workouts or types of competition were most stressful for me. For day-to-day stuff I could readily identify our typical Saturday workouts. Today, for instance, I was in the pool surrounded by an Olympian and four or five NCAA All Americans (in adjacent lanes, not mine). My lane was filled with younger swimmers who crave tough workouts. My goal at 66 is to get into the lane on time, keep up with the pace set by the lane leader, and try not to get lapped on longer distance repeats. I've always been a much better sprinter than a distance swimmer....  But the reality is that there would have been no judgement if I'd just parked myself in a less competitive lane. And enjoyed the workout a little more.

If we talk about maximum swim anxiety it would have to be in competitions when swimming on a relay and swimming the butterfly leg. I hate the idea of ever letting my teammates down.  Sometimes all of this seems insane to me. Why, at 66 years of age should I be comparing my performance in the water with people half my age and at least half a foot taller (larger wingspan is a great advantage...)? But, as Churchill is always quoted as having said, "Never Give Up."

My friendly (also a swimmer) psychiatrist suggested that I try, just as an experiment, taking a small dose of an anti-anxiety medication before the next really emotionally stressful workout; just to see the effect. OMG. I've rarely been more relaxed or faster in the water. But the idea of gulping down class five narcotics, which are highly, highly addictive, is so counterproductive to the idea of the healthy lifestyle that swimming symbolizes for me. It's not a solution. Not mine at any rate...

I found a video on a YouTube swim channel (Effortless Swimming) that basically answers my quest. The basic premise of the video is: You want to go faster, further, etc. without exhausting yourself? Then...don't try so hard. The video advised relaxing and enjoying the swims more. Forgetting about pace clocks for a while and any whiff of competition and just re-learn (or, for me, learn) how to relax and have more fun with the exercise. 

Today I slipped down into a slower lane for the last half of the practice, a territory which was less challenging in terms of performance. I opted to go third in the line up. I let the two people in front of me set the pace. Instead of focusing on times or speed I focused on just relaxing and not trying so hard. The result was a bit revelatory. I was nearly as fast but with much less physical effort. Controlling the emotion of the swim seems more important than even fine-tuning technique. And at the end of workout I left the pool with so much more energy than usual.

And then it dawned on me that the same mindset that I have brought to the pool spills over into my photography. I've been working as a corporate/commercial photographer for nearly 40 years straight and I can't remember a job I didn't worry about the night before. Methodical double-checking of lists. Planning out alternate routes to the shoot. Waking up in the way too early morning, before my alarm clock went off to make sure (again) I'd packed what I needed. Etc. And it seems that the stress of work never dissipates until the files have been uploaded and archive, the bill sent, etc. I probably doubled my perceived work load over my career just by dealing with the additional effects of stress. And for no good reason. 

One of my friends asked me a few weeks ago if I still got stressed or nervous before jobs. I answered honestly, "yes. not as much as before. but yes." He asked, rhetorically, "even after having done thousands and thousands of headshots? You must be able to do them in your sleep!" 

I stopped and thought about it for a second but I had to admit that even when anticipating an in-studio headshot, with lights I've used a thousand times before, I still get nervous on the day of the shoot. And unlike most of my photographer friends I find it uncomfortable to stop by somewhere for a beer on the way home from a shoot. I'm not happy or de-stressed until I see the images on the monitor and watch them being uploaded onto cloud storage and a hard drive. 

It seems logical to take the swim advice (don't try so hard) and see if I can overlay that onto my photography. It would certainly make life more comfortable. And the odd thing is that the underlying need to perform isn't about anything existential. I could screw up every business engagement from now until I drop dead and not worry about a fee or lost income. It's more about never wanting to screw up. Never wanted to do less than I think I am capable of. It's a tragic flaw. But I'm working on that....

Following along with the theme of aberrant psychology I have to bring up how distressing it is to me when my favorite cameras get discontinued. It's not very logical. But the discontinuation of the Leica CL is a case in point. I bought one a year ago. I've been using it more and more as I've become more comfortable with the operation and I also have a good idea of just what to expect from the camera when I shoot with it. It has a flaw or two. It could be a couple millimeters taller so my pinky fits better on the right hand side. Leica could have spec'd a beefier battery for the camera so it would work longer on a charge. But for the most part it's a great, small, agile camera that's capable of helping to make really nice images. 

I had the thought a few weeks ago that I might pick up a second body just for one of those times when I decide to travel somewhere with the expectation of taking street photographs; some place like Istanbul. I'd have two matched bodies so if one had issues I could seamlessly switch. But I waited too long. By the time I got serious about the second CL purchase Leica announced the camera's retirement and within days the prices shot up and then the cameras became as scarce baby formula. 

And in light of my recent interests in motivation and brain science and self-induced stress I think I've discovered that my need to have multiple copies of specific cameras is a direct result of the same anxiety I talked about before. While I know that in real life cameras and lenses don't make a big difference and, for the most part, are easily interchangeable, I am superstitious and irrational enough so that when I get a really great image from a camera I then allow myself to believe that the camera is "special" or "has a certain look that no other camera can really reproduce" and I feel like I want to assure that I'll always have continued access to that camera in order to perform at the top of my game. It's a totally irrational way of looking at cameras.... 

Of course the logic of hindsight should reveal to me that there have been many cameras in the past that I elevated to that special status only to later realize that progress moves onward and the cameras I thought were "the magic bullet" had been superseded by improved cameras and weren't nearly as irreplaceable as I'd painted them to be. While I do think the "feel" of a camera is important it's certainly not everything and even some of the most annoying cameras I've used have, in shining moments, returned great shots. 

I'm not going to chase over-priced used Leica CLs. I'm going to heed the advice I got about swimming and not try so hard to mythologize my tools to the point of becoming obsessed with guaranteeing endless access to them. And maybe, if I still find a desire to own a second copy I'll work on my other shortcoming; impatience, and try to wait a few years until they come flooding into the used market at much lower prices. My logical lobe tells me right now that something else will come along to take the CL's place before that happens. And I should listen to that logical side every once in a while. It might make my photography life more pleasant. Same with swimming. 

After reading this all over a few times I have to say that I sound a bit OCD (obsessive compulsive) in addition to my obvious anxiety. When I look back objectively I have to admit that choosing a challenging, unstructured, and ever changing profession such as freelance photography has to be one of the worst choices one could possible make if reducing overall stress in day to day life is a goal. I like to think I chose it because I was attracted to the constant challenge of the craft as a business. I sure got what I was looking for. 

current favorite "work" camera. The Panasonic S5. works well. no drama. good files. dirt cheap. 

To sum up I had come to believe that so much business success has to do with just endlessly producing and trying really hard never to mess up. But maybe the secret to real happiness is to stop worrying about the final outcome and learn how to not try too hard; especially when it's totally unnecessary. 

Stepping outside my comfort zone to write this. Don't be too harsh.