Shopping in Kauai with Jen.

Last month, I had a great opportunity to photograph a travel piece on shopping in Kauai for the New York Times.  Story can be found here. My assignment took me all over from Hanalei to Hanapepe.

One funny incident involved me and actress Jennifer Aniston.  While at Kong Lung Trading Company in Kilauea, I was minding my own business snapping pictures of the store when all a sudden Ms. Aniston, Jen, as I’ll call her now, whose hairstyle launched a nation of Rachel-look-alikes in the ’90s, waltzed into the shop and stopped my photo shoot.  I did hate that Rachel haircut…I dated a girl…actually I stopped dating her when she got that cut.  I couldn’t bare it.  I never liked Friends.  Of course, being the non paparazzi photographer that I am, I couldn’t go against the good graces of the store owners who surely didn’t want to loose a customer, especially Jen, who is, as we say, is a celeb.  So I had to stay back and wait patiently as her and her entourage went from rack to rack of clothing and the likes, all the while I whittled my thumbs waiting for her to go. I wanted to rush up to her with cameras ablazing and take that great front page shot for the travel piece but I didn’t.  I imagined all these readers rushing to the store cause “Rachel'” er, Jen was there…I mean if its good enough for her, well…

Her publicist bodyguard marched up to me immediately and confronted me about what I was doing with a camera.  I stared her down and explained I had nothing to do with Jen and that was that.  I can give stink like the next person.  We then chatted about all the inside info I had about shopping on the island and I actually became the shopping hero to the publicist as she took Jen to the shops the Times would write about.

Finally Jen saunters past me and gives me a nice Hollywood smile so I gave her my Clark Gable grin and she left.  I must say, she is a very beautiful woman in person, more so that TV.    From top to bottom, she’s a good looking broad…as some might say…well the Situation might say, not I…well…she did have nice legs.