(The following was originally posted on my Tumblr blog. Some edits may have been made for formatting, and to tease what the next non-F1 related article will be. For legal reasons, I must stress that most of this is speculation.)
Hey guys, it’s me again.
Recently, there has been some confusion over how celebrity photographers/paparazzi work. You can blame our good friend Kelly Piquet for that, as two new paparazzi photos of her dropped recently. For some reason, gossip blogs are insisting that Kelly didn’t call the paparazzi (which we know she does) or that her victim Max Verstappen had to approve them before release.
THAT IS NOT TRUE. That’s not even REMOTELY how paparazzi work. And today, I feel obligated to set the record straight with a quick, no-nonsense explainer.
I’m only going to say this once. Let’s get this over with:
Let’s start with the general paparazzi image pipeline. To put it simply: A photographer captures a picture of a celebrity, they upload it to an online agency (like Backgrid), outlets buy the licenses, and the picture gets distributed. The shooter/agency keeps the rights, and the outlets get a chunk of spending money from the views.
But like many things in this world, the practice is easily exploitable. This is an open secret in the celebrity and journalism worlds—one veteran paparazzo in England said as such a few years back in The Guardian, and a young influencer admitted to calling the paparazzi on herself in the same article.
As someone who regularly encounters media licensing and the strange world of celebrity in my day job, I’ll be blunt. The idea of celebrities calling the paparazzi on themselves isn’t even remotely false or a conspiracy theory; it’s absolutely true.
Think of the celebrities that NEVER appear in paparazzi photos. Daniel Craig only comes to us through red carpet premieres or official photoshoots. Googling “Chappell Roan paparazzi” gives you the same results—save for a Just Jared article of her cycling around New York City. You rarely see “candid” paparazzi pics of them because they don’t buy into the system.
But the ones you see all the time, even if you barely know who they are? They do. And here’s how they feed the beast:
Tip-off the time and place. A publicist (or the celeb) gives a reliable window and exact spot, like a coffee walk or a valet, The paparazzi have plenty of time to arrive.
Run predictable beats. Same café, same route, same hour. Shooter camps once, agencies get fresh frames weekly.
Dress the frame. Pap-friendly styling (logos forward, new ring, headline tee) so the article writers have something to talk about.
Feed the agency copy. Let details “leak” (”seen leaving X after Y”, for example) so captions sell the storyline for you across dozens of outlets.
Amplify without owning. Repost the set via fan pages or Stories, let blogs embed and aggregate; the media pipeline does the rest.
We’ve seen this time and time again with Kelly Piquet, especially since she has the yacht now at her disposal. She can give the paparazzi a time and place they can see her on the boat, and she’ll be ready to perform for the camera.
And before you come at me with “But Max HAD to have approved them!!!!”, no he fucking didn’t. Agencies don’t send JPEGs to boyfriends for sign-off; they sell licenses to outlets. Max is notoriously private, and of the two pics that sparked this post, only one even had him in frame— and he was likely asleep.
Don’t forget that a vast majority of the paparazzi pics OF Max come when he’s AROUND Kelly and her associates. SHE’S the one calling the paparazzi, NOT him!
Because let’s be for real here—what fucking Joe Normal gives a single shit about the women dating athletes?
TL;DR: Pap pics are a licensing business, but the pics are usually coordinated beforehand. No boyfriend approval button. No subject veto. Just shooter → agency → outlet.
That’s all for now. See you when I finally follow up on a gavv I gabbed about a few months back.
-F