He's not a very good lawyer. The photographer owns the copyright interest in any photos they take. the subject may have an interest based on their 'right of publicity,' but that's something quite different.
I've certainly had to get "work-for-hire" verbiage stricken from client contracts, but I'd love to be wrong about that.
As far as I'm aware though, except for that, copyright is granted to the "artist" who created the work[1].
[1] With one famous exception: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110713/11244515079/can-we...
Since his assertion has no basis in copyright law either: (a) he has an honest confusion regarding how that area of the law works or (b) he was relying on the reporter's assumed ignorance of the law to engage in some good old fashioned baseless legal intimidation in order to get his way. But that's not something a patent troll would do.