With Princess Catherine currently recovering from surgery and out of the public eye there has been extra scrutiny – and inevitably talk of conspiracy – about the now notoriously manipulated "Kate-Gate" Mothers’ Day family photo. But the idea that the royal press department would piece together a fake scene for Mothers’ Day to hide a more sinister truth – and do such an obvious job of it – seems absurd.
The Prince of Wales took the photo, or more likely a set of photos, while the Princess of Wales oversaw the editing. I may not be privy to the inner Photoshoppings of the royal family, but I’m certain there is nothing more nefarious going on here than a bit of harmless head-swapping.
I spent my first seven years as a photographer shooting family groups (at a studio in Marlborough where, coincidentally, Catherine – back when she was Kate – went to school). I soon learned a valuable lesson: the best way to get that perfect group photo of adults and children all posed together, all looking at the camera, and all smiling at the same time was to make a fart noise.
The next best way was to rattle off a half dozen frames in quick succession. That way, if the strongest frame was ruined by a blink or a funny expression, then after a bit of Photoshop head-swapping, I could still come out with a family photo to please everyone and a framed print that might hang on the wall for generations.
Those framed prints were expensive (based on what I was getting paid to shoot them, I couldn’t have afforded to buy one), but I knew if I had that blandly perfect group photo in the bag there was a much better chance of a sale. The royals wanted to sell the perfect family photo, too. Unfortunately, there were as many as 20 reasons why their family photo was rejected by five news agencies – including dodgy sleeves, ghostly strands of hair, abruptly vanishing zips, and discrepancies in the focus point. To me, these are all signs of an attempt to stitch together several frames.
I’m not sure if Catherine had much to do with the shoddy photo editing, but the tone of her brief statement – "Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing" – kind of implies that she was the one wielding the errant Lasso tool.
I’ve swapped out many heads in my time, but I’ve never done as rough a job as this. Although, full disclosure: I did once spend an afternoon photographing the King – back when he was Prince Charles – with a hired lens that turned out to have a severe case of back-focusing. His eyes came out slightly soft in every frame. Never had the future King’s sideburns been captured in such tack-sharp clarity.
It turns out that photographing a royal – or a child, or a royal child, or any person really – can be hard, and silly errors happen. It may have dodgy seams, but as a Mother's Day photo of a happy, relaxed family, the Prince of Wales' photo is a success. Besides, family photos are inherently untruthful. What’s real about four people elegantly posed in a diamond formation, all staring at the same point and smiling together in unison? Family photos exist to present people, not to be a record of them.
