There are some new togs in the anti-surveillance fashion line, designed to send paparazzi’s camera flashes right back at them with identity-obscuring glass nanospheres that coat the fabric.
The clothing line – called the Flashback collection – comprises a suit, hoody, scarf and hat that, in the words of online clothing company Betabrand, turn you into a “thermonuclear photobomber!”
The cloth sends flash camera exposures into a tizzy, overexposing the brilliantly light-bouncing fabric and underexposing humans wearing the outfits, turning them into what Wired evocatively describes as “invisible, ghostly silhouettes.”
You’ll likely be familiar with the effect, given that the nanosphere technology is used in the reflective stripes on running vests and other safety garb.
Here’s what that looks like in the company’s men’s suit:
Chris Holmes, a DJ, got the idea for the clothing while touring with paparazzi-bait Sir Paul McCartney.
He noticed that after wearing reflective clothing to several performances, photos from those shows always looked odd, because the flash that bounced off McCartney’s clothing would obscure most everything else.
The photos were ruined, but it occurred to him that the effect could serve a greater good: namely, making paparazzi and other unwanted photos worthless.
Here’s what Holmes says in a YouTube video:
Everybody documents everything all the time. As a result, you're photographed so often without your consent. It's a really good way to limit that, but also have fun with it, allowing people control of when they want to be photographed and how they want to be photographed.
Anything that can make people think twice about documenting everything with their camera, and putting down their camera and existing in the moment, is a good thing.
Will wearing these clothes shield your identity?
Only if surveillance or paparazzi have to rely on flash photography.
Otherwise, you’ll be quite identifiable in your drab gray clothes, as you can see in this before flash/after flash photo:
Still, it would make a stunning anti-surveillance statement were we all to don Flashback clothing, use makeup and hair styles to baffle facial recognition technology a la CV Dazzle, and maybe throw in a creepy T-shirt printed with faces that’s designed to confuse Facebook facial recognition.
One problem with the approach: this stuff is pricey! The Flashback men’s jacket alone costs about $400 (£263).
For that much money, I don’t want to simply blind paparazzi with my nanospheres.
I want my nanospheres to launch themselves at and disable surveillance cameras, then file legislation to curb warrantless surveillance.
For sentient, ambulatory attack nanospheres, yes, I would happily pay $400.
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To disable surveillance cameras simply use a strong laser pointer. It will kill the sensor and thus renders the camera broken. This sometimes happens if you make pictures in a Club with a laser show. Please note, I do not advise to try this in any way! 🙂
I saw someone wearing a cycle/running coat like that the other night. It I’d seen them on sale before but not in the wild. It was effective at reflecting my cycle lights back at me, so should have been very effective under brighter car headlights.
As a photographer, when photographing people in high vis gear, I either use available light or manual flash settings. I have a flash meter, or more often as time is limited I just enter the approximate distance into the back of the flash gun and let it do the maths taking into account the aperture and ISO information from the camera. There is a risk of lens flair with bright light sources in shot, which may ruin the photo. I’ve not tried photographing such a large retroflective surface.
… lens flare …
Those prices are nothing to those celebs trying to have any amount of privacy. Now they just need to pair up with the fashion designers to put an end to the paparazzi nonsense!
One may easely correct these two examples using PaintShopPro or any other software applying “fill light clarity”. So, what’s the point?
It would be nice if we could all just be polite about pictures. There’s a swing dance club in my town that likes to take a lot of pictures of their events to stir up community interest. But they’re always very polite about being clear that they’re doing this and asking people to talk to them and/or the photographers if they don’t want their picture on Facebook. Too bad other people their they’re entitled to be jerks. I wonder if you can copy write your own body and charge royalties for pictures?