About the Photographer
The early years: photographing Princess Diana, Berkshire, 1984
“I grew up on three continents, I’ve traveled around the world multiple times, and once drove 9,500 miles to Alaska and back in three weeks. I’ve walked, biked and hitchhiked across the American Midwest, melted a camera while shooting a solar eclipse and had the Osage Indian tribe perform a dance in my honour. I’ve met Princess Diana twice, slept in a cemetery, and spent the night on the streets of London… all in the pursuit of a great photo. And that was all before I turned twenty-five. Three and a half decades later, I haven’t lost my passion for great photography.”
Michael Hudson was born in Sydney, Australia and grew up in Australia, the US and England– about an hour from London. At an early age he learned about the Royal Family from seeing the Queen’s face on stamps and coins and being taught about her by his history-loving mother. His interest in photography can be traced back to evenings in Sydney, when his father would get out the slide projector and everyone would gather to watch family photos projected on the sitting room wall. In those early days, he learned that you could capture a moment and make it last forever through photography.
He first saw Prince Charles in 1981, the Queen in 1982, the Princess of Wales in 1983, and by 1986, had photographed all of the extended members of the Family several times. In 1984, he was one of the first people to see the newborn Prince Harry when he made his first public appearance at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, the day after he was born. He photographed William and Kate’s wedding in 2011 and more recently in 2023, he was back on the streets of London to photograph the Coronation of King Charles III.
A professional photographer since 1989, Hudson is also a fine art printmaker, selling his limited edition and open edition prints to private and corporate collectors in the US and abroad, and has published two books and had numerous exhibitions of his photography, including a solo show at the British Consulate in Chicago. He has been represented by Artemis Gallery in Maine since 2016.
He has been a featured photographer in COLOR, a magazine for collectors of fine art color photography. In 2015, his first coffee table book, Under October Skies, was published with images from ten years of photographing Acadia National Park in Maine. In 2016, f11 magazine ran a feature about his fine art photography in a 27-page article. In 2017 he won the top prize in the International Garden Photographer of the Year Black & White competition. He has also been a finalist in the Hasselblad Masters awards.
His images have been featured in hundreds of publications, including The Wall Street Journal, National Geographic Traveler, COLOR Magazine, B&W Magazine, Washingtonian, the Discovery Channel, Opal and Outdoor Photography (UK), among many others. And since 2020, he has been a regular contributor to the prestigious Medium Format Magazine, and its sister publication, Elements Magazine.
At the time of Prince Harry’s wedding to Meghan Markle in 2018, his photographs of Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, were used in the wedding coverage on Good Morning America (ABC-TV).
He’s currently based near Chicago and travels extensively as a professional photographer, but visits home in Britain regularly.