A few years ago, blogger Jimmie Rodgers's camera was stolen while volunteering in an impoverished Brazilian community, so he did what any sane person would do: He bought a new camera and made it ugly.
Photo by connors934.
With his uglified camera, Rodgers was able to snap pictures freely during the rest of his trip without worrying too much that his ostensibly crappy camera would end up stolen.
I was able to take over 5,000 pictures with it in Brazil. I was able to follow around a number of well known graffiti artists, and you can
check out some of the pics here
. I was also able to go into some
fairly dangerous areas
, and walk out with my camera. I was even mugged a second time, and they left my camera alone, and took my $20 cell phone instead.
We've covered similar ideas before—namely of the ugly bike variety—but the notion of uglifying applies to any gadget or piece of gear that's attractive to thieves. Got something of your own that you've uglified for its own good? Share it in the comments, or if you're feeling particularly generous, take some pics and submit it to the Lifehacker Tip Testers Group.
My Ugly Camera [Jimmies Project Journal via Make]