I signed up for this shit! Lindsay Lohan in Hawaii. Post #50!

Halloween weekend is going to be insane. Donkichow is playing on the 30th. And again I will be a cow. Actually, this time I am going to be an alpacow (alpaca + cow).

Michael J. Fox, Matt LeBlanc, Demi Lovato, Victoria Justice, Christian Bale, James Franco, Tommy Chong & Cheech Marin, Antonio Banderas, Melanie Griffith, Haylie Duff, Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Connelly & Paul Bettany, Danny DeVito & Rhea Pearlman, Chevy Chase, Rihanna, Julianne Moore, Vanessa Hudgens, Audrina Patridge, Javier Bardem & Penelope Cruz, Kanye West, Alanis Morissette, Adam Levine, John McCain (the US senator), Axl Rose, Alfonso Ribeiro, Justin Bieber, Britney Spears, 50 Cent, Matisyahu, Henry Rollins, Megan Fox & Brian Austin Green, Rachel Evan Wood, Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen, Kyra Sedgwick, Lily Allen, Paris Hilton, Fergie, Justin Timberlake, Denise Richards, Blake Lively, Macaulay Culkin, Leighton Meester, Robin Wright, Sean Penn, Shia LaBeouf, Ted Danson & Mary Steenburgen, Snoop Dogg, Orlando Bloom, Miranda Kerr, Miley Cyrus, Lake Bell, Paul McCartney, Donald Faison, Zach Braff, Bob Saget, Ashley Tisdale, Natalie Portman, Jessica Simpson, Angelina Jolie, David & Victoria
Beckham, Nicole Richie, Hugh Jackman, Ryan Phillippe, and MOREEEEE!

Nah. This story is of the time I went to Hawaii in April of 2009 (I was 22 years-old). I was paired with a Belgian guy who I never worked with before and never saw him after the job.

We knew what hotel Lindsay was staying at, so the agency flew us a day early to prepare for everything.  When we arrived to check-in the receptionist at the lobby was a flamboyant Hawaiian. “Let’s pretend we are gay lovers,” the Belgian said to me with his thick accent. Fuck it. He was the boss of the operation. I played along.

Belgian made up some bullshit about celebrating our anniversary. It worked. We had a reservation for one of the shittier rooms in the hotel. The receptionist said we were in luck and upgraded us to a pool/ocean view room.  We walked around and got to know the area while pretending to be vacationing and thus it was normal to have a huge ass professional camera with. Then we had a shitty dinner (most of the food in Hawaii was horrible) in the mall next to the hotel and went to bed early to get to the airport in the morning. Here are some pics prior real work.

Arrived exhausted!

Just chilling by the rocks wearing horrible orange shorts.

View from the hotel room

View at night

Opposite view

As we arrived to the airport, other paparazzi were already waiting for Lohan. “Welcome to Hawaii, nothing will ever be exclusive,” that’s how a local paparazzi greeted me. He was a dick and a dick that was also wrong. The set I later got was exclusive. No one got pictures of Lindsay arriving at the Oahu airport. She got snuck out. No one was able to follow.

The plan was to wake up early and look for Lindsay. Belgian was at the lobby with a book by 7 am. I told him that it was a guarantee that the first thing Lohan was going to do was head to the pool, so I told him I was going to patrol and walk around. I was right. By 10ish am, Lohan, her sister and some friends were pool side. It was time to go back to the hotel room and pull out the 500mm/2.8f lens (was shooting Canon at the time).

At first, there was no angle. Lohan was chilling underneath parasols. However, the addict that she is, she needed a cigarette. Hotel employees didn’t take long to tell her she could not smoke poolside, and was told to move to the garden. And that’s when it happened….

 

I radioed the Belgian guy and told him he missed her in the lobby. That I was already shooting. There I was. Hiding behind hotel curtains with a gigantic lens, shutter snapping away. I couldn’t believe how smooth everything was going. Pictures speak for themselves:

She stood there for a long time like that.

And started grabbing her own ass

Her friends and sister arrived

The dude with the curly hair always had crazy drugged up eyes going on.

There were way more pictures, but in travel jobs I shot RAW and those are a bitch to edit on a slow computer. I took around 150. After that, Belgian dude burst in and asked for the 500 lens. He even put an extender, making it basically a 700, cropping the picture way too close. Most of the pictures that got uploaded were mine. The ones published and on the cover of In Touch were mine. Magazines said she looked horrible, I disagree. She looked fine. She looks alright. But I guess “alright” is horrible for celebrity beauty standards.

My agency uploaded the pictures the following morning. Blogs said Lohan was posing for the paparazzi. She was never aware I was there. But after that, everyone and their mothers knew what hotel Lindsay was in and the paparazzi “gangbang” started. The following days around 20 paparazzi from Los Angeles and the 10 Hawaiian locals were parked outside the hotel waiting for Lohan to get out. At least no other paparazzi were allowed in the hotel, except of course, the Belgian and myself. One afternoon she went shopping to the mall right outside the hotel. It was a real shit show.

Inside some fancy shit store buying fancy shit that no one needs.

This is just a good photo. Notice the other photographer on the corner of the frame, there were tons of them.

Flash action in between a shit ton of paparazzi and public from the mall.

And keep walking…

Looking at me like… hey.. I know you.

There were way more shots, and we also missed two important shots. Most of the pictures from there on were taken by the Belgian as I worked as guard/cover for him. There are just pictures of her lounging around the hotel. Because we weren’t parked outside, we were unable to follow when she went to a shitty beach. The other shoot we missed because her flight was leaving at 1 pm. She left the hotel at noonish and we assumed she was going home. She wasn’t. She went surfing and missed the flight. Oops. The boss was mad. Even though I made him thousands of dollars on the previous days.