WHENEVER Albina Parllaleu goes to a high-profile party at an of-the-moment nightclub – as she did this Saturday night, at Cain at Cabana in the Hamptons – she gets her picture taken.

This evening, when legendary New York shutterbug Patrick McMullan approached her and her friend, 18-year-old Neda Varbanova, and asked if he could shoot them, they promptly posed head-to-head, hands on hips, Olsen-twins style.

Parllaleu, 21, is not famous. She’s not an actress, or a model, or a singer. “I work at Anand Jon,” she says. “Do you know how to spell Anand Jon?”

When asked how often she’s photographed, the tan, tall blonde – unknown as she may be – sighs deeply. “Too often. A little too often.”

If Parllaleu sounds a bit like a flashbulb-weary Lindsay Lohan, then the latest ruse in New York nightlife is having the right effect.

In a social phenomenon that could only happen in the Us Weekly era, clubs are employing photographers to make regular 9-to-5ers feel like glam A-list celebrities.

“The second people see a bulb go off, their faces change – it’s very Pavlovian,” says Riccardo Natoli, media relations director at Manhattan nightclub Aer, which has employed its own in-house paparazzo for the past four months.

“It makes people feel very important – like stars for the evening. I can’t tell you how many people will get their picture taken [at Aer] and then someone will walk up to them and say, ‘Are you famous?’ It’s awful, in a way. But we live in such a celebrity-driven culture, and a flashbulb is equated with fame.”

Aside from Aer and both Cain locations (the original club is in Manhattan), Star Room in the Hamptons also employs an in-house photographer to shoot luminaries and nobodies alike. Though some of the pictures wind up in the party pages of niche magazines like Hamptons or Quest – or Web sites like nysocialscene.com – their destination is almost irrelevant.

The real thrill for clubgoers is in being “mistaken” for a celebrity, or in Patrick McMullan thinking you are attractive enough to be shot by him. It’s a natural byproduct of the Us Weekly era, evident in the way these anonymous partygoers promptly, reflexively pose – at a 45-degree angle, head up, pout in place, students of Paris Hilton’s standard redcarpet stance.

“We live in a world where it’s important to be known a little,” says the affable McMullan, eyeing the posh crowd at Cain at Cabana. “Even if your picture just winds up in a local paper, someone can say, ‘I know you!’ “

The backyard patio is full of crushed cigarettes, chilled champagne bottles and the quiet desperation of partygoers waiting for McMullan to approach. “It’s not about shooting celebs,” McMullan continues. “It’s about good-looking people who look good.”

“If you had your 15 minutes of fame, we have a shot of it,” says photographer Erik Kaiser, who is also working tonight’s party at Cain at Cabana.

Kaiser – a photographer from Williamsburg who has been working for McMullan for seven months, and recently upgraded his wardrobe to suits by Yves St. Laurent at the gentle urging of his new social set – finds shooting anonymous partygoers stressful. He’s sometimes confused by who is an actual nobody or who is a socialite or who might be kind of famous for something.

“I avoid the people who try too hard,” he says. “Too much makeup or too little clothing – those are the girls from Jersey. People in the know are understated. They know how to dress; they’ve been brought up with a certain sense of style, versus someone who is trying to be in the scene and doesn’t look like they belong.”

He laughs sheepishly. “I sound so evil,” he says. “But we have to shoot people who look great, who have a great image.”

Though most party photographers say there are very few people who decline to have their picture taken, Kaiser’s had it happen to him. “I’ve met a few pseudocelebrities who are like, ‘No! You’ve taken too many photos already!’ “

This is not the scene an hour later at the Star Room; at 1 a.m., the most famous person there is Lydia Hearst. But photographer Rob Rich – who’s been booked for every weekend this season – isn’t worried about this evening’s prospects.

“People are out here to look good,” says the 50-year-old Rich, who also shoots at Aer. “And by photographing them, I’m recording their moments of looking good.”

The mentality is very “if-a-tree-falls” – you may be at a private party at an exclusive club in Hamptons and looking incredibly hot, but if a photographer doesn’t ask to take your picture, you may as well have been staying home.

Rich is a well-known shutterbug popular with actual celebrities; he’s shot parties hosted by Christina Aguilera and Paris Hilton. “When Star Jones had her party for Al Reynolds here a couple of weeks ago, I was the only photographer she trusted to be here,” he says.

(But not every club photographer feels as appreciated as Rich does; one regular shutterbug, who asked not to be named, says that often Hamptons clubgoers “look at you as more of a servant than a photographer: ‘Take my photo! Do this! Do that!’ We’re that ‘thing’ that puts them on party pages.”)

Rich has two rules he strictly adheres to: He won’t shoot people who don’t want their pictures taken, and he won’t shoot people who desperately want him to take their picture. “I find that a turnoff,” he says. “Because they’re usually not the people you want to photograph.”

Rich sells some party pictures to the usual publications – Hamptons, Quest, Avenue – and posts the anonymous pics on his Web site, nysocialscene.com. “I think this is a pretty good-looking crowd,” he says, then catches sight of two musclebound guys in white polo shirts clapping each other’s backs and guffawing loudly. He will not be approaching them: “I wouldn’t waste the effort,” he says.

As the night wears on, the crowd gets drunker and sloppier; the outdoor area is packed with partygoers who push through each other, smoking, shrieking at the sight of friends.

Rich approaches a 30-something guy in a linen jacket and asks to shoot him and his girlfriend. He casually obliges, as if this kind of thing happens to him all the time – which, he says, it does.

His name is Todd Cohen; he works at the Icahn Group, and it doesn’t surprise him that people always want to take his picture because, he says, “I have an amazing building going up at 985 Park Ave., I have amazing chemistry with my girlfriend, and my company is about to blow the f – – – up.”

“I think it gives people validation,” says Star Room owner Scott Gray. “It’s glamorous for them to have their picture taken by a big-time photographer. For Rob to pull you out of a crowd is a very big thing for them – like, ‘I’m attractive enough to be shot.’ ”

Rich’s site doubles as Star Room’s “built-in party page,” so Gray can see who’s coming to his club, and patrons can see if they made the page.

Though there are plenty of high-end clubs who have yet to catch on to this form of egostroking, the Saloon – an Upper East Side bar as casually generic as its name – also employs an in-house photographer, to desired effect.

“It makes me feel like a celebrity,” says 21-year-old Brooklynite Francesca Infanta, who checks all the party photos at the bar’s Web site (saloonnyc.com) “to see if the people are good-looking.”

“People feel special,” says Michelle Milanes, the Saloon’s in-house paparazzo. “They feel like I chose them specifically for the way they look, and they like that.”

Aer’s Natoli, whose crowd is the polar opposite of the Saloon’s except on Fridays (“we get a lot of bridge-and-tunnel: 718s, 609s, 516s, 201s”), says he’s shocked that more clubs haven’t hired their own paparazzi.

“I hate to sound like, ‘Gee, they missed the obvious’ – but they missed the obvious,” he says. “I think you’ll see a lot more of it – and then there will be an oversaturation of it, and it won’t be relevant. It’ll mean nothing.”

– Additional reporting by Raakhee Mirchandani

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‘A flashbulb is equated with fame… it’s awful.’ – Riccardo Natoli, Aer nightclub

‘I avoid the people who try too hard – too much makeup or too little clothing.’ – Erik Kaiser