I'm sitting outside a trendy Brooklyn café chatting with friends. I glance to my left and notice a huge telephoto lens peeking around the corner of the building. The actress Keri Russell is known to hang here, but she's nowhere in sight. That paparazzo is hounding me. And it's no wonder — I paid him to do it.

We live in the age of the candid snapshot. People don't want to pose for glamour photos; they want artful images that look unstaged and off-the-cuff, like a party pic from TheCobrasnake.comor a tousled cover model on Vice magazine. But calculated spontaneity is hard to pull off without the help of a professional. And I wanted some pics of me that say "I look awesome even when I'm not trying." That's where Izaz Rony comes in. The 22-year-old, who credits YouTube, Flickr, and Facebook as inspirations, does guerrilla-style photo shoots for $500 an hour and up. It's like hiring a stalker for a day.

After setting up a shoot with Rony, I email him some recent snapshots so he'll recognize me. I also supply a vague itinerary of my plans for the following Sunday, leaving it fairly open — I want to act the part of a harried celeb with TMZ on my trail.

When the day arrives, I'm a mess. What do you wear to be photographed by your very own paparazzo? I don't want to look like I'm going to the Oscars, but I can't rock my everyday grungy freelancer garb. I try on 15 different outfits before settling on the right pair of jeans, then I make sure my hair has that perfect slept-in look.

I finally make it out of the apartment, and it's not long before I catch that glimpse of my stalker. I suddenly become hyperaware of myself. Do I look authentic? Am I being spontaneous enough? My nose is running, but I'm afraid to wipe it; a shutter-click at the wrong moment might look like I'm picking my nose or nursing a huge coke habit. Will my friends warn me if I have a latte-foam mustache? Do I make funny faces when I talk? Do Lindsay and Britney spend every waking moment worrying about this stuff?

I leave the coffee shop with Rony trailing unobtrusively. I'm beginning to understand why celebrities go nuts, shave their heads, and bounce in and out of rehab; I would, too, if I had relentless photographers on my tail 24/7. When I stop to peruse a pair of shoes at an outdoor stall, Rony snaps away at me through a rack of dresses, startling a fellow shopper. "Sorry," I sheepishly explain. "That's, uh ... my photographer."

I don't feel like a celebutante hounded by the media anymore; I feel like the lamest lame-o in Phonytown. And I've had enough of it. I call off the shoot.

For days, I'm afraid to look at the disc that Rony burns for me — 60 images in all. But surprisingly, I end up liking them. I actually look like my authentic self. They may not be worthy of the cover of Us Weekly, but they are perfect for posting on MySpace. I can only hope that people who visit my profile don't pick up on the $500-an-hour fee and stress-filled day of paranoia and humiliation.

Contributing editor Sonia Zjawinski (sonia@otodisc.com) wrote about hi-def documentaries in issue 15.03.

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