When Maxim en Espanol editor Juan Rotulo called me to photograph Roselyn Sanchez for the Feb 08 cover, I was thrilled. I mean, Roselyn is easily one of the most beautiful women in the world, and from what I’d heard, she was also a total sweetheart. It also seemed unlikely that I could take a bad picture of her.

The trick, it seemed, was actually going to be figuring a way to deliver the publishers a smoking-hot newsstand cover they could sell, while simultaneously keeping the spread classy, so as not to insult the Without a Trace actress (or her publicist. *shaking head*) After all, Maxim en Espanol had always pushed the envelope much further than US Maxim.

I booked the Mayan Theater in downtown LA, now a popular night club, for the shoot. It featured Mayan architecture influences that would make fantastic backdrops, but remained super-convenient for Ms. Sanchez’s travel purposes.

Roselyn was a total superstar on camera, extremely comfortable with herself, and not an ounce of diva in her—very down to earth. She did request her own glam squad (working with new people always adds an extra variable, because I know what my team can deliver,) but I was able to pull in Jenny Ricker from the Wall Group for wardrobe—who had styled my Kim Kardashian shoot a few months earlier.

I was really tight with the guys at Maxim, not only with Juan but with Oscar Saavedra, the Art Director (I always seem to get along with Art Directors). They gave me a lot of input on choosing selects to run in the mag, and happily all of my top choices ran in the spread, including the cover. That said, I still had to get Roselyn’s approval, so I (probably naively) requested that she sit with me to go over the shots. I was stunned when she said yes.

Sitting in my industrial LA studio office, Roselyn Sanchez and I went through each pic, and she even signed off on the near-naked cover shot. Then we sat for an additional 2 hours and talked about the industry and her upcoming engagement. I don’t think I can name a client who was more grounded.

Alas, it looked like I was gonna make both camps happy after all. The cover ran exactly as I envisioned, and I was ready for a year of home-run celebrity covers. Sadly, though that issue was one of their highest-selling issues ever, Maxim en Espanol went under two issues later. (They were dissolved into Maxim Mexico and they now put Espanol covers on the Mexico magazine so it appears to still run as a unique title.)

Roselyn Sanchez was my favorite cover during my 2-year run with Maxim en Espanol.