![]() ![]() Until you have established yourself as one of the top dogs and until you've gained the respect of others, then the guys are going to try and get you out of the business. The day that it all changed was when I shot Jennifer Aniston at the beach about nine months in. The absolute hardest thing about the job was the other paparazzi. It's a very competitive business. You have to go out five days a week like a normal job and then you'll end up developing a good library and having shots sell over time.Ħ. Papping is not for people who aren't competitive or thick-skinned. If you decide, "Oh, I can do this job," and bank on three times a month getting big photos, you're not going make it. There were probably three or four photos I've probably made anywhere from $6,000 to $9,000 each. It's hard to figure out exactly how much you make off a single picture because money comes in really slowly - you make money off residuals over one or two years from a bunch of different sources. I think Paris Hilton holding the Bible right before she went to jail was one of my big shots. I only probably made about $8,000 on that, which, based on the fact that it was all over the world, was not very much money. You become really good at people-spotting.ĥ. You can make great money off a single photo, but you can't expect to make a living taking great photos every so often. To be honest, I can recognize a celebrity from a long way away just based on the way they walk and the way they wear their hair. You can either doorstep, which is when you are assigned or you assign yourself to a particular celebrity, and you go sit outside their house and hope they leave. You could doorstep a gym or a restaurant or an area of town or a city block that celebrities go to a lot. Or you can troll and just drive around looking for celebs. You start to know and memorize their cars. From there, you can do one of two things. and grab a coffee, and at the same time, you're looking for celebrities at the coffee shop. You'll be in a new place nearly every day. You get up at 9 a.m. I got paid based on how I performed, and if I wanted to take two months off and go to Thailand, I could and I did! If I wanted to not work Sundays or after 5 o'clock, I could do that too.Ĥ. I love Molly Ringwald, I grew up with Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club, and so I did not want the tabloids making fun of her based on my photograph. I really liked the autonomy of the business. I took one photo of Molly Ringwald one time that was really unflattering that I didn't send in. When you are really well-established, you can do what you want. But there are lots of benefits to being a freelance photographer. Otherwise, you can go for days completely on your own. Being freelance offers a lot of flexibility and freedom, but it can get pretty lonely. One of the main reasons to be tied with in agency is for camaraderie and brainstorming with people about who to work and what to do. ![]() Your office is Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, and Santa Monica, which are awesome but expensive places to hang out because you're spending a lot of money on food and all that kind of stuff. You need a really reliable, good car, which is another $30,000.ģ. In addition, you probably can spend $30,000 in equipment. You spend a lot on gas. With the rise of Instagram, celebrities have the power to take the shots themselves, sometimes making paparazzi shots worthless. If you're really good, you might be lucky and make $75,000, but you probably have $20,000 or $30,000 of expenses a year on top of that. I was papping from 2006 to 2009 and I actually made a lot of money doing it. But there's not very much money in paparazzi right now anymore. You think ahead of the people that you're following or other paparazzi in order to get the celebrity as they reach their destination.Ģ. If you're going to work freelance (as opposed to being fully staffed with an agency), it will be hard to make a living. You need to be quiet and behind the scenes. You have to understand the way people think, how they work, which way they're going to go. You have to have a crazy amount of street smarts, because you're basically a spy. ![]() Paparazzi shots are a really technical style of photography, and I guess I can compare it to war photography or animal photography. You need to be really skilled at more than just photography. ![]()
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