A Shift In Focus

Since the end of December 2010 I have been taking time to rethink some of the ideas that I've had for my photography over the last few years. For the most part photography has been a hobby, one that I have enjoyed a great deal, but over the next year my goal is to push more into the business side of photography. I'm not going to go into the full details of my business plan at this time, but I am going to briefly mention my ideas.

Small business owners today, more than ever, need ways to get their message out to potential clients, and my goal as a photographer is to help them do that. The reason I desire to help small business owners is because I am a small business owner myself. To start my plan is to work with a few local small business owners that I know and expand from there. I want to clarify that I will be using this blog purely to display my camera hobby, rather than business, so the format of this blog will not be changing. In the months to come you might see some images that come out of my business, but that will not be the focus here.

Another one of the shifts that I am making is from the Nikon DX format to full frame (FX) format, as I feel that this shift will better meet the needs of potential clients of my business. I have been thinking about moving to a full frame camera body for some time now, due to the amount of low light shooting that I do, but never felt a need to do so until recently. This shift was brought about by a recent post by Thom Hogan who posted about what camera he would use if he could only have one for a long time (for life as he put it), and like him I came to the conclusion that the Nikon D700 is that camera.

Once I came to the conclusion that the Nikon FX format and the D700 was what I would need going forward it became obvious what I needed to do. So yesterday afternoon I traded my trusty D300 for a D700. Using the D700 is going to force me to change some of my shooting habits, and some of my lenses, but that will all come with time. As I noted in earlier this year I am planning on purchasing the Nikon AF=S 16-35mm F4 VR, and the move to FX was one of the reason I made that plan. I also think that I'll be wanting to upgrade my 50mm F1.8D to one of the F1.4 versions, as it is rather soft on FX from what I've seen so far. Those purchases will be made in a few months time as I sell of my DX lenses. I will not be parting with my Nikon AF-S 300mm F4D IF-ED any time soon though, as I wont stop shooting birds as part of my photography hobby.