The Habits That Quietly Ruined His Photography for Years

A strong year of work often collapses under habits you barely notice. This video argues that your progress stalls less from gear limits and more from patterns that quietly drain momentum.

Coming to you from Rick Bebbington, this reflective video opens by calling out overthinking as the most familiar form of self-sabotage. You plan every variable, wait until the picture feels solved, and convince yourself you’re being disciplined. In practice, you shoot less and hesitate more. Bebbington frames this clearly: thinking does not protect you from choosing wrong, it just delays the moment when you learn anything useful. If you recognize the loop of debating locations, timing, or direction until the opportunity passes, this lands close to home.

That mindset feeds into expectation, especially when you base your own images on other people’s highlight moments. Perfect skies, perfect seasons, perfect execution start living in your head before you ever step outside. The result is more research and fewer frames, even though the intent feels serious. Bebbington also talks about how labeling himself boxed him in, calling himself a landscape shooter and dismissing anything that didn’t fit the category. You hear how that narrowed what he allowed himself to notice, even when curiosity was already pulling him elsewhere. The push here is subtle but sharp: shoot what holds your attention first and worry about where it fits later.

The video then shifts into a less glamorous problem that affects everything else: mental overload caused by poor organization. Ideas floating loose, tasks half-remembered, plans scattered across paper and apps all compete for attention. When your head is full, decision-making slows down and avoidance feels safer. Bebbington describes moving toward a single, visible system that shows what matters today without constant rearranging. He also introduces daily non-negotiables like getting outside or making something, not as discipline theater, but as anchors that prevent days from disappearing behind a desk. If you’ve ever finished a day busy but unsatisfied, this section hits hard.

From there, the habits become more physical and harder to argue with. One is simply leaving the house more often. Not chasing epic trips or ideal conditions, just stepping outside with a camera and paying attention. Bebbington notes that many of his strongest images came from local, unplanned outings once he stopped treating the indoors as a safe default. Another habit is overediting, where you compare nearly identical frames and chase tiny differences until the work feels heavy. He explains how simplifying the process changed his relationship with editing itself, picking an image faster, making fewer adjustments in Lightroom, sometimes finishing in Luminar Neo, then walking away before doubt creeps back in.

Social media gets an unvarnished look as well. Bebbington admits how easy it was to confuse posting with progress and validation with confidence. The pattern is familiar: a brief hit of reassurance followed by immediate comparison and self-criticism. He talks about pulling back, using platforms more intentionally, and no longer expecting them to reflect the quality of the work. That shift runs alongside another quieter change: learning to tolerate silence. Fewer headphones, fewer constant inputs, more space for ideas to surface naturally while walking or shooting. It’s uncomfortable at first, but it creates room for thoughts that don’t arrive on command.

Later sections touch on comparison and consumption, especially the trap of mistaking knowledge for action. Watching video after video feels productive until you realize nothing changed in your actual output. Bebbington suggests learning something and applying it immediately, then moving on. He also reflects on documenting everything versus experiencing it, describing how constant recording can flatten memory instead of preserving it. Not every moment needs a camera pointed at it, even when the place feels rare. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Bebbington.