Meghan Markle did not stage farmer's market photos for media attention

Photographer Jill Ishkanian said she so happened to be at the Montecito farmer's market on Friday, July 14, when she saw Meghan Markle. She said no one tipped her about the royal's presence there.

The images of the duchess the photographer took ended up in the Daily Mail on July 15. In it, the Duchess of Sussex was seen sampling local delicacies and buying a bouquet of fresh flowers. She took one of her dogs and had a security guard along for the outing.

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have been bitter about the paparazzi's intrusion into their private lives. They even sued and won against agency Splash News and Pictures over pictures taken of the duchess with her son Prince Archie at a public park in Canada in 2019.

Meanwhile, critics have suggested that the duchess tips off photographers to get media attention. But for Ishkanian, it was a coincidence that they were both at the same place that day. She said she saw the royal at the flower market on one of her many routine trips to Montecito, where her mother lives.

At the suggestion that Meghan Markle called her to stage the paparazzi shots Ishkanian told Newsweek, "She absolutely does not. 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."

She said that "Montecito is a small place if you're around it's not that hard" and shared that she stumbled upon the duchess while trying to get pictures of Katy Perry's father. She "saw a pink and white striped golf cart with Katy Perry's dad holding flowers standing next to it talking to someone."

The photographer explained, "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."

Ishkanian said Meghan Markle had not realised that she was a paparazzi because she used her phone and not a long-lens camera to take the photos. She shared that "on the first pictures" the duchess smiled at her as she probably 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," she explained.

Ishkanian revealed that this is the fourth time she photographed the Duchess of Sussex since 2021. But she got "a different vibe from her this time" explaining, "When you do this kind of work you become very intuitive. The way she looked at me, it was just different than the other times. She just seemed like she'd been humbled a bit or brought down a peg a bit."

"She was so nice to those vendors, I am telling you, I heard her being so nice. She smiled and it was just a different thing than I've seen before."

Ishkanian added that she is warming up to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle after they showed up at their local Fourth of July parade, which she said no celebrities ever support. She said they are the first celebrities to ever do so.