Reply To: How am I doing? Critiques/advice welcome

[nesgran]

I mostly looked at your flickr as your own website was too slow to load. Your latest shots are really good and you can see a great progression from your first flickr photos to your latest.

A couple of things that I thought looking at it:
Your black and whites don’t make any of your photos better. They look great in colour and the conversion just isn’t doing it for me.
Your 70-200 creates a pretty nervous bokeh in the forest surroundings but so does your 85/1.8. Take on some paying customers and put some money in the bank account before buying whichever is the go to portrait prime lens for Nikon. You deserve it.
With the super shallow depth of field there was one or two shots that aren’t completely in focus. One for example, blond girl with glasses her lips are in perfect focus but her eyes are a bit soft.

I wouldn’t dismiss weddings too easily. You can make it into what you want. Check out Moshe Zusman for example, his wedding photos don’t look far off what you are doing but it means he has a regular income which is not to be sniffed at while trying to learn. Being a good photographer is a very small part of being a working photographer and learning that side of things is only going to help you. It may be a temporary thing for a couple of years while you build a business or you might find that you need that income to keep you going and not having to take a second job flipping burgers.