Why "Boring" Locations Might Be Better for Your Photography

Choosing a camera system and committing to a focal length are decisions most serious shooters obsess over, but this approach to both is refreshingly straightforward. After 18 years of shooting, burning out, stepping away, and coming back, this perspective on gear, creative ruts, and where to find compelling images cuts through a lot of the noise.

Coming to you from Roman Fox, this candid street-side interview features Rick Bebbington, a photographer with roots in landscape work who spent years editing and filming for Nigel Danson's YouTube channel before forging his own path. Rick shoots primarily with the Sony a7R V and the Sony FX3, and also carries the Fujifilm X100VI for its size and ease of use. He used to shoot the full holy trinity of zooms, from 16mm through 200mm, but found he never reached for the wide angle or the telephoto. Now almost everything he shoots falls between 24mm and 50mm, with 35mm as his sweet spot, largely shaped by time spent with the Fujifilm.

One of the more interesting threads in the conversation is his take on "boring" locations. A stopover at Santiago airport after 14 hours on a plane turned into a small revelation: he came away with shots he genuinely liked, and it shifted how he thinks about where photographs can happen. That realization has driven more shooting over the last two years than all the trips to spectacular locations in the years before. He's direct about it: the belief that where you are isn't worth photographing is one of the most limiting things you can carry with you. Walking without headphones, taking unfamiliar routes, and shooting in bad weather or flat light aren't just workarounds. They're where the learning actually happens.

Rick also talks through his ongoing traffic cone project, which sounds absurd on paper but makes a certain kind of sense once he explains it. It started as a coincidence, a handful of lone cones showing up in unexpected places, and grew into something he keeps adding to without a fixed endpoint. Whether it becomes a book or a zine, he genuinely doesn't know. What's worth paying attention to is the underlying logic: a long-term personal project built around an ordinary subject forces you to keep looking, keep composing, and stay engaged with the work even when the locations are mundane. He also gets into his three essential skills for photographers, his honest views on creative burnout and how to climb out of it, and where he thinks AI fits into the photographic process without replacing the human side of it. Check out the video above for the full conversation with Fox and Bebbington.