Give Kate a break, snaps late Queen’s photographer
HIS joyful portrait of Queen Elizabeth, beaming at the camera and wearing bright pink lipstick, superimposed against the Union Flag, became one of the defining images of our muchmissed monarch.
Photographer Rankin is, however, deeply saddened by the furore over the picture of the Princess of Wales and her three children published on Mothering Sunday.
Catherine felt the need to apologise for ‘editing’ the photograph taken by her husband, Prince William, after some of the world’s biggest picture agencies were forced to ‘kill’ the image amid fears it had been digitally ‘manipulated’.
Rankin says Catherine should not be criticised for tampering with the portrait. ‘Give her a f***ing break,’ he tells me. ‘She was in hospital two months ago.’
Her apology was ‘not necessary’, he insists, because her portrait was ‘a personal photo she’s put out for Mother’s Day’. He says: ‘It’s only because people think we own her that we have these criticisms of her.’
The changes she made were, he suspects, to present the couple’s children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince
HAVE I Got News For You’s Paul Merton won’t be receiving any bulletins via his smartphone. ‘I don’t have a mobile,’ the comedian says. ‘People can email me. I’m not a 24-hour plumber, so I don’t get urgent calls saying, “I’m up to my neck in water — can you get to Tunbridge Wells in 40 minutes”.’
Louis, in the best light. Speaking at the private view of his portrait collection, Rankin: Sound Off, at Tin Man Art gallery in South Kensington, he says: ‘From my personal perspective, it looked like they just put pictures together, because when you get kids, it’s very hard — they move around a lot.
‘When you’re shooting kids, you have to make it fun for them, you have to engage them and you have to make it fast. If you’re not a professional, you don’t do any of that.’
Having captured the late Queen in 2002, to mark her Golden Jubilee, when she was 75, Rankin was summoned by King Charles to Clarence House last year as he prepared to turn 75 himself. The black- and- white close-up, which showed him with a twinkle in his eye, appeared on the cover of the Big Issue magazine.