Fuss and feathers over a family photo
Valuable time has been spent researching Royal Family’s picture
March 10 was Mothering Sunday (Mother’s Day) over in Great Britain. A couple of days before, the Prince of Wales (a.k.a. Prince William) did what many other proud fathers did and took a picture of his wife and children.
His wife, the Princess of Wales (a.k.a. Catherine or Kate Middleton), is an amateur photographer. Like many shutterbugs, she likes to fiddle around with photos using programs such as Adobe Photoshop and then share the results with the neighbours. In this case, the neighbours being the entire world. Neither the entire world nor Catherine has heard the end of it since.
No sooner had her photo been released by Kensington Palace than The Associated Press, put a “kill order” on it. They had spotted a number of alterations, which they maintained barred it from circulation by all picture agencies, including Getty, Reuters and Shutterstock. They have rules, after all.
In the most recent issue of The Spectator, the English magazine’s eminent former editor, Charles Moore, suggests the agencies’ motive for killing the photo may not be as altruistic as they would like the public to believe. Catherine has for some time distributed free family photos thereby “taking bread out of the agencies’ mouths.”
What if other celebrities adopt this DIY habit?
“What will happen to the professionals then?” asks Moore, suggesting the agencies may be trying to teach Catherine a lesson.
Meanwhile, more ink, more airtime and more social media space has been spilled on this photo of a happy family than probably anything since the death of its matriarch, the beloved and much-missed Queen Elizabeth II.
It has even received more attention these last few days than the not so-much-missed Megan and Harry. And not just in the U.K.
Valuable time has even been spent researching the photo’s otherwise elusive details. Photo buffs worldwide were undoubtedly ecstatic to learn that the photo was first saved to Photoshop at 9:54 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time on March 8, and saved there again at 9:39 a.m. on March 9. It was shot with a Canon 5D Mark IV camera sporting a Canon 50 mm, FI. 2 lens.
And how do the rest of us feel? By and large, comment on social media indicates that most people consider the whole thing overblown.
“Imagine,” writes a woman on Facebook, “if this much time was spent on something that really mattered.”
A wag from Princeton, N.J., says that he spotted an odd detail right away. “All these people appear to be happy and having a good time despite being obviously British.
“Good Lord, do people not have more important things to worry about?”
“Who bloody cares? They are her photos and her children. Leave her alone. I loved the picture.”
“In shocking breaking news, it has just been revealed that the entire British Royal Family has actually been a Photoshop creation all this time.” This from a fellow in Australian. Probably a Republican. (Why add this?)
“What’s the big deal? Why is this news?”
“Please, just shut up about the damn picture,” pleads a woman from California. (You’ll hear no more about it from me.)
There are many calls that Catherine be left to recover from her recent abdominal surgery in privacy, while as many (sometimes one-and-the-same) speculate as to what exactly that abdominal surgery was.
Perhaps they want photographic evidence?