(Angelina Jolie, David Beckham, Patrick Dempsey, Nicole Richie) Entry #3.2 the rest of my summer of 2007

Back to College

The rest of my 2007 summer was all work and it went by fast. After proving to myself, my brother and my agency, that I was capable of doing celebrity videos and pictures they offered me a job to come back after I graduated college. My agency let me borrow their camera for my time in college, a Canon 30D with a 17-40mm/4.0f lens and a 420EX E-TTL flash. My senior year in college was by far the best year I had during my time in school. I was basically done with my major and only had to work on my minor and my final concert. The question they asked you the most when you are a senior in college (with a crashing economy) was “What are you doing after graduation?” I was one of my few friends who actually knew, though my choice was probably the weirdest of them all. I was going back to Los Angeles and work as a paparazzo (after studying Music and Peace Studies). Of course once I said this in class, then I had to explain myself. Turns out once you are outside of Los Angeles the paparazzi aren’t  hated that much. People outside LA simply don’t care about dumb things, and if they do then they really want to hear stories, and I had a lot of stories to tell.

The best celebrities I saw on 2007 + pictures of other times I saw them during the years:

Angelina Jolie

People in college asked me which celebrities I’ve seen or which one was the biggest. I saw Angelina Jolie once in 2007 (a couple more times on the next years). The first time I saw her something funny occurred. She had an appointment at Studio to record her voice for the movie “Beowulf” and the agency I worked for send all the photographers to the scene to make sure we had a picture. My agency had just lost two of his best photographers that started a new different agency and they were the only other people that knew she was going to the studio. It was around 12 photographers of the same agency against 2 of the new one, we lost. The new agency’s pictures were everywhere the one photographer got a perfect angle when Angelina Jolie picked up Maddox and that picture printed everywhere.  Of course, we didn’t leave empty handed we had a lot of photographers in the scene (one of them me) and a couple of video people. Because I was the youngest and least experienced, they put me in charge of a place I didn’t really have an angle to take a picture (all the way in the back), but even like that I got a couple pictures and made it to JustJared and other blog posts.

Screencap of the story in JustJared:

The pics that I took were just two of them:

I saw Angelina a couple more times during the years, but a lot of the times she escaped and I couldn’t take a picture and other times my partner got the pictures and I didn’t get any. I also saw her once at the Red Carpet for Kung Fu Panda, but I can’t find the pictures anywhere.

David Beckham

My brother and I randomly ran in to a paparazzi chase of David Beckham back in 2007 in Los Angeles and we joined the follow. He went to the Adidas store on Melbourne st. and had people on the store block the windows so we couldn’t take a picture. We did get some shots and they made it to JustJared and several other blogs.

Screencap of the story in JustJared

I saw David Beckham several more times through the years, though he was always a really tough one to get and really not worth shooting since most the pictures you see of him he is on the football pitch with his shirt off. Pictures of him walking through LAX are only worth a couple of dollars. Regardless one time I got a really nice set of pictures with a lot of competition around me:

These were taking on September 9th, 2010 on Tom Bradley International Terminal while surrounded of more than thirty photographers and a group of policemen and security.

Patrick Dempsey

Nothing really interesting ever happened with Patrick Dempsey. He is a really nice guy and was always nice to me and other photographers. But in the summer of 2007 he gave me an opportunity to prove myself as a photographer and I got some of my pictures of him with my brother and they went on JustJared and other blogs.

Screencap of Patrick Dempsey on JustJared, and the second picture I didn’t take (since you can see me running in the background).

I saw him numerous times at LAX through my years.
 June 8th, 2008  January 1st, 2009
March 23rd, 2009January 10th, 2010
June 1st, 2010.

Nicole Richie

Nicole Richie was pregnant back in 2007 and making headlines (who knows why). So my brother and I  were sent to work on her for a couple of weeks in the summer of 2007 when she lived in Glendale with Joel Madden. We followed her a couple times and got semi-decent pictures but nothing great. One of those days her Cadillac left her driveway and we followed it all the way to San Diego. On our way there we figured out that Good Charlotte had an acoustic show over at Pacific Beach and that Richie was most likely not in the car (we followed anyway). We took pictures of the show in the beach (it was horrible) and then followed the Madden brothers to a Mexican Cantina where we got a few pictures of them drinking with tequila shots with friends. Shortly after the pictures were taken Benji Madden came out of the restaurant to have a smoke and to talk to us. He offered me a smoke, I took one (though I don’t smoke) and we chatted a while. He basically told us what we already knew, that Nicole Richie wasn’t with them and that from here they were going to a friend’s house to a party and that he would appreciated if we stopped following (we stopped).

I saw Nicole Richie several more times. I saw the Madden brothers a lot more since Benji lived close to my apartment and his DCMA store was around the corner.

These pictures were taken in April 10th of 2009 inside the CNN building when Nicole Richie appeared on Larry King Live. There were more than 15 cars waiting outside her house to follow her and the chase was pretty intense. I remember I was the second car behind Richie’s limousine and I was running yellow lights (10 or more cars followed behind me running all reds). As soon as her limousine made a stop in front of the building I jumped out of my car and took these pictures.
The first picture is her entering the building and you can see me on the reflection on the glass.
When the competition saw her entering the building they stopped trying to take pictures and I got the exclusive picture of her standing pregnant next to the elevator.
The third picture is when she came out of the building. When she first walked out of the doors she got swarmed by more than 50 photographers with short lens and flash. Then they called security on everyone and pushed all the photographers outside of the parking lot. I was the only one with my long lens ready and got that clean picture. I smoked the competition that day, my pictures were in almost all the blogs and got a few prints.

This picture was taken May 4th of 2009 at LAX. Its Nicole Richie’s daughter “Harlow Madden” with her father. Nicole Richie was following behind, but once a celebrity has kids, their kids belong the celebrity.

These were taken on May 2nd and May 10th, 2010. The first picture is from her departing flight to NYC I was the only photographer there. The second was on her arrival and there were a lot of photographers there she decided to cover up (notice the rosary tattoo on her left foot).

This was March 2nd of 2011 on a flight departing to France. A lot of photographers were around she didn’t seem to mind any of them this time.

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