I literally and without remorse hate paparazzi, they give us people that carry cameras for a living a bad name.

With that, my famous and/or generally shy readers should like this…

Adam Harvey designed this flash-equipped purse which, when the pre-flash of an intruding camera goes off, will fire off it´s own series of flashes, effectively drowning out the intruding shooter´s own camera.

An example via Adam´s project page:

Anti Paparazzi Purse by Adam Harvey (foto via www.ahprojects.com)

The shy subject would need to point the purse towards the offending fotog’, so presuming you’re not too wasted coming out of that so-hip-it-hurts club, shouldn’t be too much hassle. Adam’s also working on accessory-sized pieces, so perhaps soon you’ll be able to combine a broach and earrings with the bag, covering every angle.

Equally of interest is the Blur Anti-paparazzi facial spray, which contain ultra reflective nano-particles, or shiny little bits of dust. Developed by Troika and Kok-Chian Lelong, this unreleased spray will (it seems) lay a fine coating of that shiny dust where applied, and reflect the camera flash as to blank out the captured image.

The effect? See for yourself:

Image via www.We-Make-Money-Not-Art.com

What about cooler, less bulky or (possibly) skin-affecting  technology you say? This Times Online article from 2004 mentions that HP developed an electronic badge that, if the camera plays nice by having the software to support, will use face-scanning tech to simply fuzz out the shy subjects’ face. Further research into if this will ever come to market produced no answers, so wait and see on that I suppose.

I also came across a mention of a cape that would also fuzz out visual recordings, sadly re-finding that link has been Monday’d into not happening. Grrr…

A quick flip side for those celebs who actively want to be surrounded by cameras; Nokia has been long rumoured to be working on a ‘Celebrity Mode’ feature that, via WiFi, sends out a signal to anyone interested that they’d in fact love to have their foto taken at this time. And here I was thinking todays’ cries for attention couldn’t get louder.

As a foto guy who isn’t pap scum (for this is how I consider them), I have absolutely no problem with this field of research. In fact, as I live in a highly-touristed town and happen to own a recumbent bicycle, I don’t exactly love it when people start furiously snapping at your truly trying to relax on a ride through town.

In today’s lens saturated times, someone having a problem with thier shot taken (famous or not) should have an easy way to stop this. It’s called the right of privacy, a right that certainly isn’t as guaranteed as it once was.

Final note; A reminder that NONE of these products are yet available to buy, although Adam’s says on his site that a limited batch of bags will be available soon. Until these or other tech solutions come to market, it’s a hand to the camera and a reminder to keep those knickers on. Have you seen what pops up on Facebook?