Only a highway separates Watts, a depressed Los Angeles neighborhood infamous for its 1960s race riots and the Lynwood Correctional Facility, the jail that is currently holding Hollywood starlet Lindsay Lohan.

I was expecting more of a spectacle on Sunday afternoon due to Lohan's lockdown, but it was quiet on the celebreality front, as Lohan only had one visitor (her lawyer) and only one other reporter from People stopped by, perhaps to dig up some "sources" who could dish about Lohan's alleged drama with the other inmates.
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It was more interesting to chat with the paparazzi who were staking out the facility. They were lurking in the shadows by the building's main entrance, taking pictures of everyone who stopped by in the event that they had a famous connection.

It's hard to separate fact from fiction with these folks, since it seemed like they viewed me as competition because I was carrying my small Canon point-and-click. Once you take out the camera, you've "crossed over to the dark side," as one photographer said (I won't bother with names since the first names they used were inconsistent throughout the afternoon and some celebrity photographers on the circuit go by silly pseudonyms like "Karma").

Of all the tales I heard about their business, the takeaway was that life as a member of the paparazzi is every person for his or her self. Over and over, I was told how they are constantly getting screwed out of money by celebrity publications and other photo agency middlemen. Furthermore, now that everyone has a camera and online media outlets can copy and paste (and sometimes steal) pictures all over the web, the price of a good celebrity shot has gone down. They now need to work ten times as hard for the same amount of money, or so I'm told.

However, a quality, exclusive shot of a celebrity visiting Lohan in prison could fetch up to $30,000 on the market. Exclusives of A-listers like Jennifer Aniston (especially with a new man) or Angelina Jolie with her kids can bring in over $100,000. On average, it seems like a decent shot will bring in a couple thousand bucks. If you can take one good picture a day, it looks like you can make a decent living, financially at least.

And then there are the "lottery shots" such as the grim pic of Michael Jackson in the ambulance when he died last year. That one was worth millions, a female photographer claimed. And persistence was the key for the winner. I was told how other paparazzi would laugh at the fellow on the Jackson beat because he hung around the hospital when no one else would.

But life as a member of the paparazzi is not just about waiting around or coaxing celebrities into view like they are animals at the zoo. It's primarily "all about the hustle," as one guy put it.

I was told how paparazzi will do anything to make sure they get the exclusive shot, from giving other cameramen misdirections about celebrity whereabouts to slashing tires and threatening those who step on claimed territory. Some operate independently while others work together like paparazzi gangs, according to one photographer.

And once you've taken out that camera, it's effectively viewed as a weapon by both celebrities and the police. One of the photographers recounted how he had been beaten by a famous movie star and he couldn't fight back. If a photographer so much as touches a celebrity, even in self-defense, the stars' high-powered Hollywood lawyers will always find a way to put the liabilities back on the photographer, the photographer claimed.

The police are bound to take the stars' side too. It's obvious to the paparazzi that everyone looks down on them. One person likened his colleagues to Mexicans who wait for work on the side of the street--but at least society recognizes that recent immigrants are just trying to put food on the table.

Yet even though everyone seems to hate them, paparazzi seem to be fine cashing in on our obsession with celebrity. And everyday may be a "hustle," but one photographer argued that a career following celebrities around makes him the "freest person on earth."

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