Culture: Game: Reality
Photospotting   (+11)  [vote for, against]

The game is simple:

Hang around popular tourist spots in your area, and strike ridiculous poses in the background of the hapless tourists' photos. Look for digital cameras.

Find, on the web, these pictures in personal galleries. Not an easy task - in fact, on the surface of it, impossible. But ingenious searching may be able to narrow it down and statistics are obviously more favourable if you get yourself in more photos. Therein lies the game.

Post links to (and maybe mirror) these pictures. Points awarded for number of photos infiltrated and subsequently found. Bonus points for the poses and costumes.

(PS. What happened to [ravenswood]? I recall they posted an idea entitled, "You, In Someone Else's Vacation Photos." I'm not sure if this is similar - I can't remember what that was about.)
-- Detly, Jun 18 2005

ET, In Someone Else's Vacation Pictures ET_2c_20In_20someon...vacation_20pictures
my idea derived from ravenswood's [theircompetitor, Jun 18 2005]

You, in somebody else's vacation photos http://web.archive....20vacation_20photos
[ravenswood]s idea, as preserved by the Internet Archive's wayback machine. They deleted their account, but I don't know why. [jutta, Jun 18 2005]

The Voyueristic Inverse of this Idea http://touristphotos.blogspot.com/
People taking photos of people taking photos of people. [contracts, Jun 19 2005]

(?) UPS Shirt 2004 http://www.student....au/~heerij01/shirt/
We sold a fair few, too... [Detly, Jun 20 2005]

(?) You, in someone else's inauguration pictures http://www.techcrun...st-pretend-you-did/
Posting it here as it appears the other archived idea is here [theircompetitor, Jan 21 2009]

yeah, what happened to ravenswood?

I was watching a news item last night from New York. people were crossing the road in the background and someone fell over in spectacular fashion behind the reporter who was totally oblivious to being upstaged. the other New Yorkers totally ignored him.
-- po, Jun 18 2005


That was made even funnier by the fact that the 'reporter' was being interviewed by her mum, who presumably got her the job, and was visibly floundering on camera. It was one of the most hapless bits of live telly I've seen.
-- wagster, Jun 18 2005


(+) Is it possible to do an internet search using facial recognition software?
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jun 18 2005


Definite [+].

To help with finding your photo, you could wear something distinctive that might be easily findable by image analysis software. For example, if you wore a shirt with concentric black-and-white triangles, I'd imagine software could be written to find photos containing such an image (or a bar-code, or whatever). In fact, such a shirt could become the standard equipment for the game. You could even have teams (black-triangles versus barcodes....)
-- Basepair, Jun 18 2005


[2fries] - from what I hear, not really. I think the current level of facial recognition software works if the face is the right size, right way up and you tell it where the nose, eyes, etc are. I could be wrong. [Basepair]'s idea is interesting, though.
-- Detly, Jun 19 2005


//Clothing pattern recognition //

Probably baked by that guy with the rainbow wig and the John 3:16 sign who keeps popping up at sports events everywhere.
-- Adze, Jun 19 2005


I'm pretty sure a barcode T-shirt would work, though it would have to be a pretty low-res barcode in order to be readable. You'd do best, presumably, to stick to sunny locations (brighter light, smaller aperture, greater depth of field - else you'll be all fuzzy in the background).
-- Basepair, Jun 19 2005


even elser :)
-- po, Jun 19 2005


Or hold up a mirror in the background to show the photographer with a someone else photographer in the other background taking the same picture.
-- FarmerJohn, Jun 19 2005


And when you've mailed them a link to their photo of you (in the background) holding a photo of someone elser and a mirror showing themselves taking a picture of you, sneak round to their house and take a picture through their window of their look of astonishment as they view this picture on their PC screen while a friend takes another picture which shows this person and the picture on their PC screen with you taking a picture of them, which will be the picture you will, of course, eventually send them through the mail.
-- hippo, Jun 20 2005


...and then they see that the postman has a camera...
-- Detly, Jun 20 2005


Well, if anyone wants to find me in your holiday snaps, I'm that nutter with either a Salters Chemistry Camp t-shirt in bright purple, or my periodic table of elements t-shirt, both waaaay too big for me, but wear them to places everywhere...

Chemistry Camp, funnest thing since sliced bread!

Actually, it was great...
-- froglet, Jun 20 2005


Ah, geek shirts. We made some last year - see link.
-- Detly, Jun 20 2005


[froglet] You find sliced bread funny?
-- AbsintheWithoutLeave, Jun 20 2005



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