Jessica Alba arrived in New York City to promote her new movie, The Eye. She checked into the Gramercy Park Hotel and over the next couple of days made appearances on The Late Show with David Letterman, MTV TRL, and Regis and Kelly. While there were numerous chances to shoot her coming and going at each of these places, somehow the reality of those images seems contrived and commercial. The true art of a paparazzi shot is to snap a photo that captures the star just being themself in the normal course of day, ideally without them even aware of your presence.

Jessica ventured out from the Gramercy Park Hotel to dine at Cipriani Downtown with a business acquaintance. I grabbed a cab and followed behind her destination. Jessica’s driver spent about ten minutes trying to lose the cab. His best move was standing at a green light with my cab in the far left lane, him in the next lane, and two lanes open to the right. The driver didn’t budge for a whole green light, infuriating the two left lanes, because the cab didn’t move either. Then just as the light turned red, he tried to make a right hand turn across lanes to ditch the cab.

You have to wonder why he found this necessary when you consider Jessica is pregnant and he knew it was just me in the cab. To make a right hand turn across traffic, hoping that some guy might not run a yellow-red, seems like a bad decision on his part. The reply that he would not be behaving in this manner if I wasn’t behind him is nonsense. The fact that I catch a cab to go to her next destination is not illegal. His driving erratically is hardly worth the effort. She’s going to have dinner. Why would you place your client in any kind of jeopardy for the mere sake of avoiding a situation where she might have her photo taken? You got me. She is not the President of the United States. The cat-and-mouse game of driving as if you are avoiding Columbian thugs out to kidnap a rich executive is absurd. Ultimately, if she didn’t want any press attention, all she had to do was eat in at the Gramercy Park Hotel.

Here’s Jessica leaving the Gramercy Park Hotel to make an appearance on the Tyra Banks’ show. Stars for some reason now feel that despite the fact that they are in the middle of a press junket it’s not in their best interest to smile when they are en route to their promotional destination. Looking down, refusing to smile or engage the handful of freelance photographers working to snap shots that can be sold to People, US Weekly or OK magazines in order to promote them, is ridiculous.

Honestly, I don’t get it. You are here in New York to promote your movie, The Eye. The freelance shots taken of you serve the overall PR mission. Why not treat it with respect and use it to your advantage. You are not being compensated to go on any of the talk shows and yet those shows are selling ad time in between interview spots, so what’s the reasoning behind ignoring the print media? Wouldn’t you rather have your fans see a smiling face than one staring at the ground?