Imagine that you host private events and parties for your own children and, instead of hiring a professional photographer your family has previously used in other events, you take the event photos of these children yourself during these events.
Now imagine that for doing this, you find yourself being attacked in public by that professional photographer for denying work to photographers because you didn’t hire him.
Not only that but also imagine that the individual in question then lambasts your photographic skill at taking those shots of your family members because you didn’t hire him…
Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? After all, if these are your own events and your own children, who has a right to think you’re obligated to hire them instead of handling your own photography? Not to mention publicly bashing the quality of your photos to others because this photographer wasn’t hired.
Well, this is exactly what has happened to British Royal Family member Kate Middleton in an exceptionally public way.
Her being a Royal and a highly visible public celebrity aside, the accusations leveled against her by the photographer in question are just as odd.
To briefly recap, The Princess of Wales was recently publicly criticized by a royal photographer for having the gall to take her own official pictures of her own children instead of letting him or others do so.
From her children’s births to the present, Middleton has shot and released photos for all three of them; Charlotte, George and Louis during special occasions such as their birthdays and other family events.
Because of this, former royal family photographer John Swannell decided to publicly accuse Middleton of supposedly ruining the career hopes of other photographers by handling her own official photos. In comments to the English tabloid, the Daily Mail he complained that,
“All the work I got with the royals really elevated my career. Nowadays, someone like me just won’t have the chance. Those chances should be given to young English photographers.”
That anyone explicitly needs to be a photographer of royal family members to make a photographic career for themselves demonstrates a nearly delusional depth of bubble thinking. To then also argue that a mother (despite being a Royal) should then be obligated to hire photographers for her own children’s portraits because of this reason is even more absurd.
What then makes Swannell sound even more pedantic is partly claiming justification for his anger by arguing that her skills at capturing her own kids aren’t very good anyhow and stating that she’s “not a great photographer”.
Regardless of what anyone thinks of the British Monarchy as an institution or of the Royal Family’s members individually, it’s very hard to read something like this particular embittered photographer’s arguments without considering them badly misplaced.
Swannell’s criticisms of the Princess of Wales have themselves been widely criticized in comments on the same Mail article in which he made his arguments, and they’ve been hammered in social media posts about the same issue too.
As for Middleton herself, she has actually always had a personal interest in photography since at least her university years. At that time she even made her undergraduate thesis specifically about photographs of children.
It should then be little surprise that she just might want to break a few old Royal traditions by preferring to handle her own pictures of her children, for official events and otherwise.
Even the embittered Swannel seems to grudgingly accept this to some extent, saying, “In some ways, though, Kate is probably right to do it herself. She’s not a great photographer, but she just snaps away, and with kids it’s easier if you know them.”
Now there’s a surprising idea, that a mom who likes photography, studied it and practices its technique regularly might actually have an idea or two about how to do it well with her own young kids.
Judge Middleton’s photos for yourself though. Here are a couple of examples from the official Instagram feed of the prince and princess:
