Official royal baby/family photos...

I'm sure the family are going to have hundreds more "official" portraits shot over the coming months/years so releasing a family snap now isn't really such a terrible thing.

As said above, a 'standard' family snap makes them seem much more down to earth than a staged portrait without a hair out of place. I agree that this is a good thing rather than a terrible conflict of protocol.
 
Cagey75 said:
I still don't care, about anything they do or ever will, and would rather not hear about them on a photography site. But since someone brought it up, it is the photography angle people are going to talk about ...
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And yet....still clicked......:thinking:

essexash said:
I'm looking forward to reading the comments when dpreview run the story.

For what its worth, I quite like them. Typical family snaps rather than some over engineered set piece.
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:clap:

Yv said:
:bonk: I don't get the fuss either to be honest, they are family snaps - ok, the 'family' concerned has a far higher profile than most of us has, but seriously, does it matter if they are not 'perfect'? Half the nation spends its time moaning that the royal family aren't like us, then when they do something the rest of us do, the other half are berating them for it. :shrug:
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:clap::clap:

DemiLion said:
Who says they should have been shot professionally? A tiny little thing called protocol.
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Be interested to exactly how much you know about royal protocol. :lol:
 
Here's the brief interview I saw earlier with photographer Terry O'Neill. The photo's make a deliberate statement of breaking with tradition and presenting a more casual, relaxed image of the young family. The professional, posed picture can wait until the Christening but interestingly, O'Neill thinks these natural snaps are the ones that'll stand out in people's memories.

"As the years go by I'm sure more people will look at this one than the official one. I mean you just brush over the official pictures, don't you?... everyone looks great, the baby looks great, you just forget it."

[YOUTUBE]1s3HR0apOzM[/YOUTUBE]
 
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It's a clever move, a nice family photo shot by family, it also knocks the wind from the sails of the Paps who have probably been desperately living up trees around the Middleton residence trying to get the first pics of the baby for the tabloids ;):D.
 
Happy snaps, but no worse for that. Very much in keeping with the calculated publicity machine that has decided that the current direction is to ram home the 'Mr&Mrs Average' image.
 
From a PR point of view, the photos have caused more of a stir with publicity than having some pro shots done. Pretty much what they wanted I would imagine?
 
Flightphoto said:
From a PR point of view, the photos have caused more of a stir with publicity than having some pro shots done. Pretty much what they wanted I would imagine?
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That's cynical too. Maybe they just wanted to release some shots to quieten the baying, since he was born almost a month ago.
 
viv1969 said:
Maybe they just wanted to release some shots to quieten the baying, since he was born almost a month ago.
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Yep, and I would echo everything Yv and others have said. They're trying to move away from the whole pomp and pageantry thing but unfortunately the media (and the enduring hunger of many members of the public) are making that very difficult - just look at the utterly ridiculous minute by minute coverage we all had to endure when Kate went into labour. I highly doubt the family wanted any of that but they have to accept it because of who they are. Ditto the scrutiny these family photos are receiving. That said, historically even the official royal portraits get slated (often for good reason) so I'm sure they were prepared for it!

I think the only way there can be any kind of successful "normalisation" for the royals is if they were to take on fewer official engagements and fewer royal duties, and we know that isn't going to happen in a hurry. Given that they are the future King and Queen with a massive global profile, it is unfortunately quite unrealistic that they can expect anything resembling a relaxed lifestyle without the media machine taking over. In that regard I can understand why Mark and others would feel that these images are incongruous, but I still think it was an interesting snub to the royal rulebook, and I quite like that.

They weren't actually released as official photographs, just family snaps, I think that term 'official' was coined by the media. The official/formal images are yet to come and I suspect they might be different from the kind of thing we've seen in the past.
 
I quite like them. The things that caught my eye were how pretty kate looked and how big the dogs tongue is.
 
Lindsay D said:
They weren't actually released as official photographs, just family snaps, I think that term 'official' was coined by the media. The official/formal images are yet to come and I suspect they might be different from the kind of thing we've seen in the past.
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The two photos were an official release from Kensinton Palace, nothing to do with any phrases coined by the media.
 
DemiLion said:
The two photos were an official release from Kensinton Palace, nothing to do with any phrases coined by the media.
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but that doesn't make them an 'official' portrait - I think people are getting a bit hung up on that, it just means Kensington Palace authorised a couple of photos from no doubt a lot taken at the time, for the media to use, rather than someone nicking them from Mr Middletons flickr feed, as it were or worse, the long lens scenario.

Anyway, even if it is considered a break in protocol, is it really that important in the overall scheme of things?
 
Yv said:
Anyway, even if it is considered a break in protocol, is it really that important in the overall scheme of things?
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In my eyes....no. It doesn't change anything.

Whatever next -
Hell mend Betty if she decides to ever stop the Xmas speech because she can't be arsed!!!!!! :D
 
I agree with Terry O'Neill that they are charming pictures that they will cherish.
Like very many casuals family pictures they are soft and are less than technically perfect,
However the complaints about the back lighting are way off target as this adds to the picture in many ways and has been used in this sort of shot by professionals since the dawn of photography.
I have no Idea why they should be expected to subject the baby and themselves to a professional shoot so soon.
What they have shown us is a true family picture.
 
I think her father has showed great skill with the shot, shooting contra-jour he has avoided the 'squinting into bright sunlight with screwed up faces' had he followed convention and shot with the sun at his back ;)

Seriously though, a bit of fill in flash would have worked wonders, but it's a nice family photo, a record for them, so who cares what anyone else thinks. Leave them in peace so they can have as normal a life as possible given their situation.
 
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Shouldn't Hatfield at least be afforded an upper case "H"?
 
Not seen the pics under discussion nor do I have enough interest in them to look for them
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And yet, here you still are. :shrug:
 
Quite right, Nod. Apologies to any Hatfielders ("Hatters"?) for my mistake.
 
Joeturner11 said:
They are very poor, He could have least got them level!!
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Given how many people on here that cannot straighten a horizon trust me that is not even worth discussion.

For goodness sake a grandad picks up a camera for some nice family snaps and all of a sudden they should be professional, fill flashed and straightened.
Give the family a break!
 
That's not asking much though. I wouldn't want to put any of my photos on display unless I was 100% happy with them.
 
ZoneV said:
Quite right, Nod. Apologies to any Hatfielders ("Hatters"?) for my mistake.
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I wasn't blaming you! I assumed you had C&Ped the quote directly from their site and that the error was theirs.:p
 
Nod said:
I wasn't blaming you! I assumed you had C&Ped the quote directly from their site and that the error was theirs.:p
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Hah, unfortunately the mistake was mine. Whilst my dumbphone would let me select and copy the text from the article, on this occasion, for reasons known only to itself it wouldn't give me the option to paste it into my post so I had to type it from memory. :(
 
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