Rainer Michelmann, 57, has enormous patience. He wouldn’t have got the 2,300-plus selfies with celebrities otherwise. He tells Joern Perske how and why he does it — even as his girlfriend is stressed out!

The hunter sometimes waits hours for his prey. When the moment arrives, he acts quickly.
He speaks politely to the target, gets himself in position and with a “smile please,” pushes the button.
Rainer Michelmann has hunted down many a trophy with this method.
But what exactly is his prey? Photos of himself with celebrities, nowadays known as selfies.
And the 57-year-old German is a master of the art. The self-proclaimed celebrity hunter says he has more than 2,340 photos of himself with famous people.
The pictures are loaded up meticulously on to his website,
www.der-promijaeger.de In his Hall of Fame category he can be seen beside Bob Geldof, Woody Allen, and Alain Delon. His Top 20 features the Dalai Lama, Mikhail Gorbachev, Dirk Nowitzki, Steffi Graf, Roger Moore, Angela Merkel, Joachim Gauck and Helene Fischer.
It doesn’t matter to Michelmann what the celebrity has done to make themselves famous — he’s keen for a photo. Most of the people he snaps (686) come from the world of football.
Then come musicians (335), actors (303), athletes (190) and television personalities (169).
“At this point I cherry pick,” says Michelmann, who travels hundreds of kilometres in pursuit of his hobby and sometimes has to wait hours for the right moment. It also costs him a lot of money.
“It has become an addiction,” he confesses. But he says it with a happy smile.
Michelmann, who comes from the town of Langenselbold in Hesse, central Germany, began collecting photos in 1992, when he was working as a freelance journalist at a newspaper.
During an interview with a country singer at a furniture store, he says he suddenly thought to himself, “Man, you’re never going to see him again — take a photo.” He hung it in his hall where he enjoyed looking at it.
By 1998 he had 20 pictures and by 2002 they had grown to 50. Then he really got a taste for it. By 2007 he had collected 500.
“I’ve printed and laminated the photos and keep them in 14 folders,” he says. “And of course they’re also saved on hard drives.”
To engineer meetings with celebrities, Michelmann travels to many events.
He tries to book himself into the same hotels as the stars and swaps information with a network of autograph collectors about where celebrities are staying.
And at events he has a very simple trick for getting close to the rich and famous. “I hang around outside the toilets — everybody has to go there,” he says.
It’s also important to keep an eye on the stage door, he says, and hotel lobbies are often a good place to “bump into” celebrities – that’s how he got the Dalai Lama.
He once sat next to Bud Spencer at breakfast, while, “I met the singer Meat Loaf one night in an underground car park.”
In earlier days he was reliant on fellow celebrity hunters to take the pictures for him.
But with today’s new digital cameras, Michelmann can almost get the whole thing done with his eyes closed: He whips out the camera, flips out the display, holds it at arm’s length and snaps away.
“It’s not hard. Lots of celebrities aren’t annoyed at all.”
Not everybody welcomes the attention. “Not every clown is funny,” Michelmann comments, recounting how the Russian clown Oleg Popov avoided his attentions in Heidelberg.
He also failed in his attempts to snap George Clooney in Baden-Baden and the actress Gudrun Landgrebe at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
And Dutch football manager Huub Steven snapped at him to stop pestering him when he tried to grab a picture with him in a hotel.
“But those who are successful have to learn to deal with failure too,” says Michelmann sportingly — for example when bodyguards become an insuperable hurdle.
“When I succeed in taking a photo it’s like being a footballer when he scores a goal — pure adrenaline.”
Indeed, one of Michelmann’s most prized photos is with Argentina’s Lionel Messi, at an international match in Frankfurt.
“Sixty people mobbed him but I got a good photo. I’m proud of it,” says Michelmann.
So what’s the secret of his success? “Just don’t get aggressive or be too pushy. Always be polite and friendly. Compliment women on their dress,” he says.
For Michelmann’s girlfriend, Petra Schell, his hobby is too stressful. “The waiting around is exhausting,” she says.
Michelmann thinks his photos are a better souvenir of his meetings with celebrities than an autograph, which, he says, “you can’t read anyway.” Photos are more personal, he adds.
Jens Ruchatz, a media studies expert at the University of Marburg, says selfies have become a “remarkable cultural practice”.
They allow others to take part in one’s life, he says.
Sometimes Michelmann feels doubtful about his pastime. “Sometimes when I’m waiting, I ask myself, ‘Why are you doing this?’ But it’s hard to stop.”
And he still has a few celebrities on his list he’s keen to have selfies with: Barack Obama, Queen Elizabeth II and the Pope.
“But I’d also be happy to have my first photos with Madonna and Robbie Williams,” he says.  — DPA