I have many static images under a directory in my site structure, and I'm not concerned with hotlinking or copy-protecting the images. For a myriad of reasons, what I need to do is not show the image path on the site (or show a fake one).
Is there any way to do this without resorting to an http handler or a worker asp.net page?
You could use URL Rewritting. Doing it yourself would require you to implement a custom handler but there are third party options already available you could try.
I would guess however that a simple http handler implemented as an ASHX endpoint would probably be the easiest option.