During a visit to a well-known location, everybody tends to
take photos at the same place, including the professional photographers. Indeed
there is nothing wrong with it, except that all the images captured will be
cliché and not unique.
A designer from Germany, Philipp Schmitt, has an interesting
idea to prevent someone from taking cliché photographs, he develops a prototype
camera called Camera Restricta that will only take original photos; original
here means that there are not many people taking pictures at that venue.
Basically the Camera Restricta is a smartphone that's packed
in 3D printing case. Utilizing the smartphone's GPS and Internet connection,
the Camera Restricta will analyze an area of 35 x 35 meters around the user,
and then look at the database of Flickr and Panoramio related to photographs
which have geotagging data from that location. If there are too many photos
taken from that venue - about 35 photos - then Camera Restricta will refuse to
take pictures and the shutter button won't work.
On the rear screen, you will see information about how many
pictures that have been taken in an area. The camera also has a speaker that
would sound like a radiation detection device; the more photos that had been
taken in that place, the louder the voice. So, without the need to look at the
screen, you already know that the place has been photographed by many people.
Besides helping the user to take more original photos, Camera
Restricta is also useful in certain areas where there is a ban on photography
in any form. In such places, Camera Restricta will display an info which says that
you are prohibited from photographing there, and the shutter button won't work
again.
Currently Camera Restricta is still in the further
development stage; the idea sounds very interesting especially for those who
always feel challenged to be more creative.