As long as there is a perceived demand for pictures of Britney’s shaven head, or crotch, there will be photographers willing to go to great lengths to capture such images. The solution to the problem is for us to all lose interest. I did this a while back
How about pointing a high-powered flashlight directly at the camera lens? This could screw up the exposure enough to make the pictures worthless. Of course, you’d have to be ready to use the flashlight at a moment’s notice. . .
One’s best weapon may be to carry a camera of one’s own. Photograph anyone who is intrusive to the point of harassment, get restraining orders against them, take more photos of them as evidence if they get too close again, have them jailed. Pretty soon you should be able to form a fifty-yard circle around yourself where no paparazzo can intrude.
Couple this with distributing posed photos of yourself scratching your butt and such, flooding the market with decent-technical-quality “embarrassing” images, to crowd and reduce the market for blurry telephoto pics.
Do the paparazzi exsist outside the major cities? It seems like if you really want to avoid them all you have to do is not live in Manhattan, L.A., Miami, London, or Paris.
I know if you have a mjor event planned like a wedding they’ll follow you anywhere but I’ve heard major celebrities living in cities like Chicago, Austin, etc. and they go pretty much anywhere they want without getting hounded by paparazzi (fans & autograph seekers don’t count).
Not very safe if you are being followed by camera cars.
Ya’ll are having a lot of fun with this thread, but I would like to interject with a serious answer. There is a way to defeat the paparazzi and you can do it. Stop buying their product. Stop buying the magazines that print the pictures and stop watching the entertainment mutual masturbation shows. When there ceases to be a demand, they’ll have to get real jobs.
Now, please continue with your regularly scheduled thread because, some of these ideas are quite funny.
Followed, eh? I’m not seeing the downside.
Laws restricting sale/use of unauthorized photos, substantial (enough that they actually lose money) fines for breaking to both the paper and the photographer.
IOW, take out the profit.
Sound advice for me but rather useless for, say, Russell Crowe.
But the fact of the matter is, many celebrities want their picture taken by paparazzi, because that is what makes them celebrities in the first place. People like Paris Hilton are famous for being famous… not for having accomplished anything. Their whole business plan (for lack of a better term) is to be seen. That’s why they live in New York or Los Angeles and spend every night going to clubs, parties, etc.
Even those who do actually produce something, like musicians or movie stars, see the paparazzi and their clients (magazines and TV shows) as part of their publicity machine, and most use it to their advantage.
And your problem with those folks having to get real jobs, too, is …? 
I always wondered why the really famous, talented celebrities, that don’t need/want the publicity don’t hire their own photographers and put out their own magazine. The photographers they hire could know their schedules, and would follow the paparazzi taking similar pictures, then print them in a magazine they control, thus eliminating much of the profit for these candid shots.
I’m pretty sure that a lot of photographs are staged, they don’t need to hire the photographers, they’ll cooperate because they sell the pictures.
Actually selling the rights for a wedding to Hello is pretty much what you are describing.
You nailed it. Arriving at a club in a limo, wearing snazzy clothes and a lot of 'tude is a sure way to get your pic in a celeb mag, or on the net. Move to sacramento, go out without make, wearing a baseball hat and baggy sweat pants, while driving a beat up Honda Civic from the mid 90’s, and no one will realize you’re that so and so.
Well och course the people in the convenience store will recognize you after a while, and maybe a paparazzo will show, but apart from the inevitable spread - OMG!1! looooook at how she’s slumming - there won’t be any more fun to be had and interest will die down. If you insist on living in a flashy house somewhere in L.A. and getting a blowjob out by the pool, or going to clubs without underwear, you knw you’re exposing yourself. Even the Britster can’t be that naive.
BTW, the series of pics where Ms Spears flashed her crotch, and she was with Hilton… Someone on this board thought that Hilton, when she had her hand on Britney’s knee, was trying to help avoid being exposed. I think she was saying: “Wait for it, wait. They’re not all in position yet.”
Because they wouldn’t print a picture in “Britney” magazine showing Britney flashing or driving with the baby in her lap? Those truly candid shots that seem to be the most popular are the ones the stars don’t want us to see. Of course, I don’t want to see them either, but I can’t seem to get away from 'em.
Back to some technical ideas.
Clothing that confuses autofocus systems - fuzzy vertical lines may do it.
Clothing that throws back flash - ie some materials become almost transparent when flashed (see one of the Bush girls for an example) - imagine if there was a reflective layer underneath, it would almost certainly ruin the shot.
Active flash belt/jewellery (at night, obviously)
Something IR - enough to overwhelm the IR filter.
All I got for now
Si
I doubt it.
Firstly, most professional paparazzi aren’t using your everyday point-and-shoot. They’re running around with a Nikon D2x or Canon EOS1Ds MkII. The advanced multi-zone adaptive autofocus systems on those cameras is unlikely to be fooled by some fuzzy stripes on a dress.
Second, even if such clothes did fool the autofocus system, any pro photographer worth his salt will also be able to focus manually without too much difficulty. Hell, some pros focus manually anyway, even if they don’t have to, because they feel it gives them more control over exactly where they’re focusing.
You might get some hotspots, but i doubt it would ruin the shot altogether. The body isn’t a flat mirror, and chances are that only some of the reflective material would reflect the flash straight back into the camera lens.
The standard for these paparazzi photos isn’t as high as for glossy magazine advertising shoots. The recent pictures of Britney Spears’ pubic area demonstrate quite clearly that, if the subject matter itself is interesting or controversial enough, photographic excellence takes a back seat.
A few hotspots from a reflected flash would hardly disqualify an otherwise sought-after image.
Again, unlikely to offer any real obstacle. And the inconvenience of such items, and the havoc they would likely work on the celebrity’s finely honed sense of fashion, make it unlikely that we’ll see this sort of thing deployed as an anti-photography strategy. Hulking bodyguards probably work better.
Carry around or wear a full face burka. No face, no picture. No picture, no papparazzi.
Didn’t some celebrities carry around squirt guns to annoy the paparazzi?
True, and even if it was, you should really be focusing on the face 99% of the time, anyway, which the autofocus will catch, as long as there’s enough contrast in the image. Plus, as you said, there’s always manual focus.
I read somewhere (I believe in an interview with Carrie Fisher?) that when celebrities go out together, either one of them can be the designated “moat.” That is to say, if some rabid Star Wars fanboy wants to talk to Princess Leia, Carrie’s friend is the “moat” who engages that fan in conversation and keeps them away from Carrie. Likewise, Carrie Fisher is the “moat” (the defensive structure that invaders must cross) for anybody trying to talk to her friend.
Does that stop cameras? No, not really. I’m just sayin’.
Real celebrities also do such mundane things as owning property in the hills, with buzzer-operated gates and privacy hedges, to create physical obstacles between themselves and the photographers; or, as noted, to live in smaller communities — Harrison Ford, for instance, lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
While Jackson Hole probably has fewer photographers, it probably also has fewer prohibitions against flying a helicopter over Ford’s property to get telephoto shots. That could be an advantage to living in a major city — restrictions against low-flying aircraft.
The very best way to get the paparazzi off your back is to tell your agent publicist to stop leaking your personal information. Those guys want you to be famous — and how do you think the photographers know where the celebrities are going to be anyway?
If I were a celebrity and I wanted to stop being followed by cameras, I’d go to the baseball game and buy a ticket — then once in the gate, leave by another gate. Buy a ticket to the zoo — and leave. Buy a ticket to a museum — and leave. Sooner or later the photographers are going to run out of money buying tickets for events I can afford to walk out of.