Meet the US man who has taken more than 20,000 photos with some of your favourite celebrities

Most of us dream of taking a selfie with our favourite celebrities. One US man turned it into his full-time job.

Bob Pivoroff has been tracking down musicians and actors to take photos with them for about 33 years.

Speaking to The Hits hosts Jono Pryor and Ben Boyce, he revealed how he made an income from selling autographed celebrity photos and memorabilia for about 15-20 years.

From US presidents including Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, George Bush (senior and junior) and Jimmy Carter, to rock stars The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Guns'N'Roses - you name them, he's probably met them.

More recently, he's also snapped pics with pop stars Rihanna and Katy Perry, and says rap superstar Post Malone is "very friendly".

So how does Pivoroff do it?

He told the radio hosts that sometimes it involves hanging around outside their shows and sometimes it's about "doing your own detective work".

"Find them at hotels or their flight coming in, and even before the internet I was having to do that. Now with the internet, it makes it a lot easier to track them down."

He's spent thousands travelling to meet them, and sometimes he waits hours for them to show up.

"There's times it's an hour or two and another time you could be waiting 10 hours or be waiting all day long. Very time consuming," he told Pryor and Boyce.

Some celebrities are more difficult to approach than others, he revealed - despite the fact that in 2022, people taking selfies has become more popular.

"Bob Dylan's very difficult. Madonna, Stevie Nicks, very hard, Taylor Swift.

"I've gotten right up to Madonna a bunch of times and she just ignores, or you know, doesn't wanna do anything."

He counts Matt Damon and John Travolta among the nicest celebrities he's met, and Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise are still on his bucket list to snap a photo with.

So far Pivoroff has about 20,000 photos and "that's probably a low number".

"I stopped doing photo albums about 20 years ago. Some are on the computer since I went digital about 15 years ago and I try to back them up on Facebook," he said.

Occasionally a celebrity will recognise him, he says - and sometimes other celebrity photo hunters even ask him for a photo, which is "kind of funny".

This article was first published by the NZ Herald and is republished here with permission.