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Weekly updates


Scrolling through other people’s travel photos on your Instagram or Facebook feed can tend result in a distinct feeling of deja-vu, as though you’re seeing the same photos over and over again.

There’s a level of over-saturation to tourist photos- everyone tends to visit the same places, and take photos of the same landmarks, leaving the rest of us to live vicariously through an electronic upload of clichés.

‘Where are the photos of the road less travelled?’ we yell at the computer screen, as we see yet another person holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

German designer Phillip Schmitt has come up with a brilliant and decidedly sassy answer to this very modern day issue: a concept camera connected to a smartphone GPS tracking system that searches online for photos that are geotagged close by, and prevents the camera from taking a photo if the numbers are too high.

The device – known as Camera Restricta – literally refuses to take a photo if it decides you’re not being creative enough: retracting the shutter and blocking the viewfinder, all the while displaying the high number of photos already taken there and essentially flashing your unoriginality in your face.

At the moment, the camera only exists as a prototype, but there’s definite potential for it to have multiple uses, and Schmitt says it could work as a censorship device by ‘blacklisting’ certain places in accordance with copyright laws.

You can check out the camera and a video of it in action in the gallery above, which might get you to reflect on your own photo-taking habits.

Juliet Mentor

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