Today on our special “Holywood photography week” (In honor of the Hollywood Film Awards 2019 that took place a few weeks ago), we bring you a different topic which is actually highly controversial – Paparazzi
No matter where you land on the question of morality with Paparazzi shooting which often invades the privacy of stars and their families, the actual work of a Paparazzi can be very difficult and in many cases extremely unrewarding as NY Paparazzo Miles Diggs explain in the BuzzFeed video above.
Diggs story is quite unique. He didn’t start as a Paparazzo, he actually was studying photojournalism in NYU and got an assignment to take a picture of a person he doesn’t know in the street. As it turned out that person happened to be Tyler Swift and the picture ended up in “People” magazine. Instead of handing in a picture to his professor he gave him the magazine and shortly afterward he quit his studies and opened a Paparazzi company.
There are a lot of objective difficulties in being a Paparazzo. First, you need to know who to shoot (how they look), when and where your target will be and get there on time. You also need to try and get the shot that nobody else gets – which is very difficult because other Paparazzo will – in many cases – get the same tips as you will. Next, you need to be able to sell you work and get it published as quickly as possible – a few seconds too late and a different Paparazzo can beat you to it and get the fame (and money).
The massage Diggs tries to convey in this video is that Paparazzo can be respectful and for that, they will often get a lot more (such as one on one time with Rihanna or Ariana Grande) and if this is how most Paparazzo would have acted they would probably not get such a bad rap, but sadly this is not the case.
A somewhat different perspective of the Paparazzo experience can be found in the video below from LA which seems to reflect a lot more of what people typically think about Paparazzi’s work (including staking, running, waiting by celebrity houses and shadowing them wherever they go).
Inside the Lives of Hollywood Paparazzi (Bustle)
You can check out the rest of our celebrity photographer series here on LensVid.
Iddo Genuth 
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