Celebrity Photographer Recalls Time Britney Spears Was ‘In Charge’ Of 2004 Photo Shoot

Pop star Britney Spears finally got a chance to tell her story with her memoir, “The Woman In Me,” and now those around her are getting a chance to tell their stories as well.

One celebrity photographer is recalling a time when the “Toxic” singer was so “in charge” of a 2004 photo shoot that she even told her father, Jamie Spears, to “get out” years before she was placed in a court-ordered conservatorship for 13 years.

Celebrity photographer Markus Klinko reflected on working with the Princess of Pop for her Onyx Hotel tour back when the now 41-year-old pop star was only 22 years old. The celebrity photographer reflected not only on Britney's commanding presence in the room but also on her relationship with her estranged relationship with her father, 71.

“This is an interesting dynamic given everything that happened later, that she was so in charge,” Klinko told Page Six. “Probably nobody else except David Bowie, I would say, was so creatively in charge and did not ask for her management, publicist, or whoever else to get a second opinion.” Although both Jamie Spears and Britney's former manager, Larry Rudolph, were present at the photo shoot, Klinko still remembers how Britney called all the shots.

Klinko recalled one incident when Britney was posing on a bed in lingerie. When Jamie interrupted the scene, Britney promptly told him to leave, Klinko recalled. “That was really interesting. When I shot Britney in bed … she was in very revealing lingerie playing in the bed with the pillow and all that," Klinko said. "But at some point, she noticed that her dad came by the set. He just sort of wandered in and she immediately grabbed the blanket, covered herself and she said, ‘Dad, get out! I’m doing something.’”

“He left immediately,” the photographer recalled. “Although her dad and her management were all present on the location, they all sort of went off to play cards in a back room for the next 12 hours and barely appeared.”

Markus Klinko revealed that Britney's stylists, legendary duo Kurt Swanson and Bart Mueller, aka Kurt & Bart, had hired him for the gig. “They contacted me and they said, ‘Britney wants to hire you for a very, very personal project for her tour.’ I was obviously fascinated with that idea and was just sort of on the heels of [shooting] Beyoncé’s ‘Dangerously in Love’ [album art],” he explained. “I got a lot of music requests at that time, but nothing could have been better or more exciting for me than hearing from Britney — and especially through sort of almost private channels. It felt very personal.”

Britney herself traveled from Los Angeles to Klinko's studio in New York City to execute a specific vision that she had actually created herself. He had only days to build sets around her ideas. “[Kurt & Bart] sent over a [photo] of a napkin on which Britney had put some keywords of inspirations that she wanted to integrate into our photo shoot and some of these keywords were ‘ice princess,’ ‘magic forest’ and ‘jazz lounge,’” he recalled. “She and I really worked very closely as a creative team.”

However, even though she had a lot of ideas, Klinko would not call her a diva. “She was so process-oriented and … she gave it 100 percent,” he added, revealing that the whole photoshoot took 14 hours to complete. “Never did she say, ‘Oh, it’s getting late, I’m tired.’ She was like, ‘What are we doing next?’”

Even though it was interrupted by her father, Markus Klinko admitted that he still liked her bedroom series the best. “I loved the bedroom series. She really had fun with that. And then with that interesting moment with her dad appearing for a second, it kind of broke the atmosphere for a couple of minutes,” he recalled. “It took her maybe five minutes to get back into the playful mode once he left. She was a little bit startled maybe, I would say, for a minute or two.”

“She was just posing in the bed in a very Marilyn Monroe-ish but updated, 2000s kind of way,” he explained. “In 2004, I’d already seen my share of the most beautiful supermodels and celebrities on Earth. But when Britney walked into the room, she took my breath away. I thought to myself, ‘This is probably the most attractive woman on the planet.’” He went on to say, “She stood out to me as the ultimate goddess.”

Now that her conservatorship is over, Klinko said that he would like to work with her again if she was down for a new photoshoot. “I bet you anything that if I get six hours or eight hours with Britney in the next few weeks or whatever that I can not only repeat [the Onyx Hotel tour book shoot] but I can top it,” he said.  “[Her current team knows] that this is an offer that I made and I’m waiting for. This is now 20 years later. This is a Britney in a completely different situation. She has her power back.”