Rick Bebbington<\/a>, this candid video covers the photography lessons Bebbington wishes he’d learned earlier in his 18-year journey from hobbyist to professional. He opens with something most people don’t want to hear: the biggest thing holding you back isn’t your gear, your location, or the light. It’s that you’re not going out and shooting often enough. Bad weather, bad light, a boring location \u2014 Bebbington calls these what they are: excuses. He also points out the trap most people fall into, which is spending too much time watching videos like this one instead of actually making photos. Learning becomes a way to avoid the discomfort of taking bad shots, and that avoidance slows everything down.<\/p>\nOne of the more counterintuitive points Bebbington makes is about identity. He spent years telling himself he was a landscape photographer, which meant he needed perfect conditions, dramatic locations, and golden light. That identity gave him only a handful of shooting opportunities per year. Compare eight sessions of 50 shots each to shooting 30 frames most days, and the volume difference is enormous. More volume means more learning, more clarity about what you actually want to shoot, and faster progress. He also addresses gear addiction directly: the time and money spent researching cameras and lenses is time not spent shooting. If something isn’t working for you, sell it and move on. The format doesn’t matter, the brand doesn’t matter, and chasing the perfect kit is just another version of the same avoidance problem.<\/p>\n
Bebbington also covers the mental side of photography, which he argues is where most of the real battle happens. Comparing yourself to other people online, chasing likes, shooting for an audience instead of yourself \u2014 these habits lead to burnout. The only useful comparison, he says, is between where you are now and where you were a year or two ago. He touches on the Dunning-Kruger effect and why overconfidence can be genuinely damaging, especially early on. And when it comes to building skills, his priority list is straightforward: exposure first, then composition, light, and subject. Most people overcomplicate it.<\/p>\n
The video covers quite a bit more ground beyond those points, including how to use constraints to sharpen creativity, how to let photography projects grow organically instead of planning them to death, when chasing a professional career can actually kill your love of the craft, and why community matters more than most people think. Bebbington speaks from real experience on all of it, including a four-year stretch where he stopped wanting to take photos entirely. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Bebbington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shooting more photos is the single most reliable way to get better, and most people already know that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603608,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-603607","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}