At boarding school I liked to mess around with friends (usually in other dormitories), way after lights out. Anyway I noticed that if a teacher suddenly came in (with their torch), and if I made no physical movement then… (even when they’re eyes were looking directly at mine) (so you’d imagine they’d spotted you) well because I didn’t move, then about 80 (possibly even 90!) percent of the time, when I could have been caught I simply wasn’t.

Basically (certainly for a man with a tourch) the act of thinking you’ve been spotted, causes you to move, which makes you become spotted.
It proved useful again, when I had to run away from some drunk chav’s who got of my bus to beat me up.

P.S Not sure if this works in daylight!!!

Good find Semper. Back in my days at the tracker school we did many kinds of excercises on concealment and what the article shows are some of the visual basics. Besides the visual other important things to remember are silence and being still.
I also learned that people use a sort of mental file cabinet and using presumed knowledge search for the person or object with that knowledge in mind.
For example we would take a group of searchers out and tell them go find Jess in his blue coat. He should be easy to spot in his BLUE coat? Right? (Everyone saw him wearing it) Well, Jess took off his BLUE coat and put on an ORANGE coat and was easily within sight of the trail yet no one would find him. They were all going on the preconceived notion of what they THOUGHT they were looking for and it HAD TO BE BLUE.
There is definitely a lesson for you LEO's in that Semper, don't allow the description to define your search. If a perp were to suddenly change coats and walk straight past you would you notice?
I'll be interested to see what else comes up in this thread - camo is one of my favorite subjects. I'd write more but it's 6 am and I;m stillnot fully functional.

[edit on 20-3-2010 by Asktheanimals]