The Location Field in the File Open dialog should always show the current path during navigation. The path should change as the user changes location using the navigation helper buttons above. The reason why this is needed is two fold:
1) When you open the File Open dialog for the first time, a default path is shown in the navigation helper. If you wanted to quickly add a few more subdirectories to the path, you either have to start afresh and type the entire path in the Location field or navigate using the folder list. Both options are time consuming. It would be so much easier just to append "/folder/folder2" to the Location (provided the location always shows the current directory).
2) Very often, the user will want to copy the current path to the clipboard. You cannot do this if the current path is not displayed in the Location field.
Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. The issue you are reporting is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug to the developers of the software by following the instructions at https:/