How Meghan Markle Paparazzi Pictures Came About—'No One Calls Me'

A paparazzi photographer who has snapped Meghan Markle four times in two years says the Duchess of Sussex has never tipped her off.

Meghan is frequently accused of staging paparazzi shots by social media critics and sometimes in mainstream media publications.

However, Jill Ishkanian, whose most recent pictures were at a Montecito flower market on Friday, July 14, told Newsweek she has never been tipped off by Meghan.

"She absolutely does not," Ishkanian said. "No one calls me, trust me. I have absolutely no support, I do everything by myself. It's a total pain in the butt when you get their picture to be totally honest."

Ishkanian said she spends a lot of time in Montecito because she grew up there and her mother is still local.

And her latest pictures of Meghan, published in the Daily Mail, came after she stumbled on the duchess while trying to get pictures of Katy Perry's father.

"I saw a pink and white striped golf cart with Katy Perry's dad holding flowers standing next to it talking to someone," she said.

"I said 'Oh my God, here's my chance to get Katy Perry's dad.' So I flipped the car around. I was trying to cross to go into a parking area and this big guy in a blue shirt was in front of my car and then he backed away.

"Then he flipped his hand and said go ahead. This was Meghan's bodyguard that I was talking to."

"I come up and I see Katy Perry's dad and I look and there's a woman who looks like Meghan Markle standing next to him," she continued.

"I start taking pictures and here comes the blue shirt guy, big guy, and I realise that's her bodyguard and absolutely that's her."

Social media critics frequently read secret cooperation into the facial expressions of celebrities, including Meghan.

However, Ishkanian said she believed Meghan wouldn't initially have realised she was a paparazzi photographer because she pulled out her phone not her long lens camera.

"On the first pictures I took of her she smiled at me and she thought 'she's a woman.' Everyone talks about equal rights and I'll tell you what, I have even more power as a woman than a male paparazzi because they don't think I'm anything.

"So I picked up my iPhone, I knew if I picked up a big camera, she's trouble."

Far from setting up the pictures with Meghan's cooperation, she said she has at points had to go to great lengths to convince picture editors that her images are actually of the duchess.

In December 2021, she got pictures of Meghan enjoying a day out wearing a mask, sunglasses and a hat pulled down over her face. So little of Meghan was showing that she had to find an old picture of the duchess in the same boots to prove it was really her.

"When someone is in disguise it's really hard and yet people said that those were set up pictures," she said. "They were absolutely not set up pictures. The reason that I knew everything she was wearing is I went back and looked at other pictures where she had worn those boots before. I had to prove to the picture editor that it was her."

The Sussex camp previously told Newsweek the couple didn't cooperate with photographers on specific pictures and Ishkanian's detailed account of how she stumbled on Meghan adds weight to this account.

Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

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