The paparazzi as we know it are not always professional photographers with websites of their own or working for companies. They are sometimes freelancers who take photos to sell to companies on a contract basis for big bucks. The problem that they sometimes face is where to store the numerous photos they take, sometimes daily.
Image hosting websites offer them the opportunity to store and share their photos all in one place. Each day they can upload their whole shoot onto the hosting website server and acquire either one link for an entire album or celebrity or one link per photo to them market and sell for money. It can be a lucrative but dangerous business. Knowing where the celebrities are, how to spot them, being a position to take their photo and knowing when to leave before people get angry. Celebrities feel their privacy invaded when everywhere they go, people are following them with cameras.
If you are considering some side work in taking celebrity photos, be careful and follow some simple rules. The most important rule is to be considerate and not be rude. Take into consideration the situation at hand. Is the celebrity with their children or older parents? Do they look like they are in the middle of an important discussion? Are they crying or looking upset and just want to be alone? Remember, that they are people too with their own set of problems.
Most times, though, the celebrities will let you take a shot or two of them if you are polite. Talk to them, ask if they mind if you take their photo, promise to be quick and get out of their way. If you want to do it anonymously, use a zoom lens and stay as far away as possible. Be careful when taking the shots that you don’t walk into traffic, stumble over a sidewalk or worst yet, stumble over someone.
Once you’ve got your photos uploaded to your computer, save some space by uploading the batch to an image hosting service to preserve your images should you experience a hard drive crash in the future. These photos are valuable commodities. Then contact some popular magazines to try to sell your photos. You can make some great money or even be put on staff if they like your photos enough. It’s not always about who you shoot, but the shot you capture.
