Letting Chance Choose the Route: A Random Walk, Two Cameras, and My Son
When my son and I tried RBNXPLRNG and came home with completely different pictures.
I’ve written many times before about the photographic opportunities in our local environment. Be it your own home or office, or the streets right outside your front door. Those everyday environments we live in can seem boring, but there’s photography gold all around us, and all we need to do is slow down and see.
I’ve shared a technique in this newsletter before that I recommend to others to aid in this process, and I’ve also run workshops on the subject as well. This week, however, I want to focus on another tool or technique you can use to unlock your environment's potential. This time, from fellow Substacker Marcel Borgstijn, it’s all about taking a random walk in your local environment and documenting it through photography.
The Tool That Sat on My To-Do List
Marcel calls it RBNXPLRNG. That’s urban exploring with the vowels removed.
The idea is simple. You begin anywhere with a few intersections, take a photo, then let a little web app decide your next move. Left, right, or straight on. You walk to the next junction, take another photo along the way, and repeat until you’ve got a series of five. No planning, no destination, no agonising over where to point your feet. The randomness does that part for you.
It’s loosely rooted in the Situationist dérive, a 1950s idea of drifting through a city guided by what pulls you in rather than where you mean to end up. Marcel has wrapped that old notion in something anyone can pick up in five minutes.
He reminded me about it the other day. I’d been meaning to give it a go for ages, and, as these things tend to, it had quietly slipped down the list. So I committed. But I thought I’d do it a little differently.
Two Cameras, One Route
Lately, I’ve been sharing a lot of my photography with my youngest son. So instead of heading out alone, I asked if he fancied coming with me. Same route, same junctions, two sets of eyes. I was curious how differently we’d see the same five stretches of pavement.
I also bent Marcel’s rules a touch, and I hope he’ll forgive me.
The original method asks for one photo per section. One decisive frame. For me, that’s part of the appeal, but for a younger photographer, that’s a lot of pressure to hang on a single press of the shutter. So we relaxed it. Walk the section, shoot whatever catches your eye, as much as you like, then choose your favourite from each stretch at the end.
What surprised me was the effect of a small change. Taking away the hunt for the one perfect shot didn’t speed us up. It slowed us right down. With the pressure gone, we were free to stop and poke around at anything and everything. A peeling bit of paintwork. A reflection neither of us would have clocked at pace. The way the light fell down a side street we’ve walked past a hundred times without a second glance.
Same Pavement, Different Eyes
This was the part I’d hoped for, and it didn’t disappoint.
We walked the identical route. We stood at the same corners. And we came home with two completely different sets of pictures. Where I was drawn towards my usual kind of subjects, such as light, texture, the interaction between humanity and nature, and the quiet geometry of buildings, he was pulled towards things I’d have strolled straight past. It’s a useful reminder that there’s no right way to see a place. There’s only your way, and someone else’s, and the gap between them is where the interesting stuff lives.
There was something else, too. Doing this together, no agenda beyond the next junction, turned a photo walk into proper time spent in each other’s company. The cameras gave us a reason to be out, but the conversation along the way was the real keeper.
Giles Junior’s Perspective
Some slight confusion meant we ended up with four images instead of five. Giles Junior was happy to stick, but I quickly grabbed a bonus one to make the five.
Giles’ Perspective
Why It Works
Strip it back, and the magic isn’t really the app at all. It’s what the randomness does to your brain.
When you don’t know which way you’re turning next, you can’t switch to autopilot. You can’t drift through on muscle memory the way we all do on familiar streets. Every junction is a small surprise, and surprise makes you look. That’s the whole trick. The tool simply removes the thinking so the seeing can take over.
And you need nothing for it. No fancy kit, no perfect golden hour, no permission. A phone will do the job as well as any camera. Half an hour and a bit of curiosity is the entire shopping list.
Give It a Go
If your own streets have started to feel a little tired, this is a lovely way to wake them back up. Better still, take someone with you. A partner, a friend, one of your kids. Walk the same route, compare what you each came back with, and see how differently you both look at the world.
I’m glad Marcel nudged me into it at last. The only regret is that I waited so long.
You can find the tool over at https://rbnxplrng.com. Be sure to subscribe to Marcel’s own writing here on Substack as well. Link below,
Have you ever photographed the same place as someone else and come home with something completely different? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
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great read. and so reat that your kid went along. he'll follow you where you go
I like the boy's work!