Paparazzo has made less than $5k from Barnaby Joyce images … so far

The paparazzo Barnaby Joyce confronted after claiming he was "hiding in the bushes" outside church has so far made less than $5,000 from the images of the former deputy prime minister, his partner Vikki Campion and their 7-week-old son, Sebastian.

Nine News and Daily Mail Australia have so far bought shots of the family leaving Saints Mary & Joseph Cathedral in Armidale, but paparazzo Guy Finlay said it is too soon to quantify the total amount the images have made, as they are yet to sell to magazines.

"How long is a piece of string? You just can't put a figure on the pictures," he said. "It's only Monday of a long weekend. They could be making money right now and I wouldn't know about it. It's a fluid situation."

Finlay denied Joyce's claim he was hiding in the bushes and insisted he was standing "in the open" in a park across the road from the church.

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Once Joyce spotted him, Finlay said the politician crossed the road and circled him "like a bull".

"He did a circle around me. He got within two to three metres [of me] and he had his fists clenched … His blood was boiling," he said.

Joyce took out his phone and started recording the altercation and posted it to his Twitter account on Sunday morning.

In the short clip, he asked Finlay, who works for Matrix and was banned from a red carpet in 2006 for spraying Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams with water guns, for his and his employer's name, but Finlay refused to give them.

On Monday morning, eight days after Joyce and Campion's sit-down interview on Seven's Sunday Night, Joyce appeared on the same network to call for more stringent privacy laws.

"Private individuals, kids especially, should have greater protections than what they've got. They haven't got any," Joyce said on Sunrise.

The former Nationals leader also denied to host David "Kochie" Koch that he had shaped up to throw a punch at Finlay.

An insider, who asked not to be named, believes that by highlighting Finlay on Twitter the way Joyce did, he drove the price and the demand for the images up.

"If that confrontation didn't happen the pictures definitely wouldn't have made that much at all, possibly just a sale to the Daily Mail. Barnaby shot himself in the foot by doing what he did because people want to see what all the fuss was about," the insider said.

Finlay said the whole ordeal has been "a headache" for him, but he has no regrets and will continue to pursue Joyce and his new family.

"They sold their soul to Sunday Night and now they are a legit news story because of those actions," he said.

"You won't see us chasing Malcolm [Turnbull] or [Bill] Shorten, unless they get into the same situation Barnaby is in, like cheating on his wife.

"A lot of people criticise us. They say, 'Get a real job,' but it's supply and demand. They read the newspapers and magazines. People want to see if he will stick with this new family."

Amy Croffey writes The Goss and Social Seen columns for The Sun-Herald and is an entertainment reporter for Fairfax Media.

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