Why the “Lost Royal Photos?”

The Royal Family photos were taken over several years (1983-88). At the end of 1986, Britain’s top photo agency had invited me to submit my photos for worldwide syndication in their catalog. At the young age of nineteen, I was going places… or so I thought. After shooting dozens of engagements and events in the summer of 1987, I made contact with the agency again to send them the pictures– but was told they had wanted them within a day or two of events to syndicate them to magazines, newspapers, etc. In other words, the pictures were essentially worthless to the agency two months later, so I never sent them any photos in the end. I shelved them, hoping that one day in the future there would still be an interest in them.

And there they remained, unseen for over thirty-five years. A handful of them were posted on my website about twenty years ago, but then taken down. It wasn’t until the pandemic hit in 2020 that I was able to spend the time needed to professionally scan all the original negatives and slides.

So now the images are like new again, ‘dusted off’ and presented to the public, most of them for the first time ever. The “lost photos” have been found.

How did you digitise the film?

All of the photos were scanned from the original in-camera negatives or transparencies (slides). Most were scanned using a dedicated high resolution medium format film scanner, capable of very high quality scans. Some were camera scanned using a medium format, high resolution digital camera and a 1:1 macro lens in a custom scanning setup. Then all the images were digitally processed and individually cleaned to remove all dust spots and scratches and retouched to open up the shadows and reveal more detail or tone down the highlights, and then color-corrected to be true to the original subject matter. It’s been a long term project that has taken years but I think the results have been worth the effort.

When I started going through all the negatives and slides, I thought I wouldn’t be too impressed with the quality of the pictures. After all, I took the pictures before I turned professional, and was just a student learning photography. And indeed, my first few royal engagements are nothing to look at nowadays; I didn’t know how to get a prime position in the jostling crowds and my first attempts were often not in focus or blurry. Some just weren’t exposed correctly. But I learned quickly and was soon taking pictures at the front of the barricades, manually setting my aperture and shutter speeds, and figuring out which engagements and events to attend to see the Royal Family in more intimate settings. So today, after 35+ years in professional photography, I’m impressed with the quality of my pictures, specially when you consider that my cameras were all manually focused and the only automation was the light meter inside the camera. I even had to wind the film on after each exposure, and change rolls after 36 exposures… that took some planning so I wouldn’t waste film, but I didn’t want to get to the end of a roll right when the Queen or Princess of Wales was right in front of me.

Did you take all these pictures of the Royal Family yourself?

Yes, the collection represents hundreds of hours spent waiting in all kinds of weather to see the Royal Family appear at film premieres, polo games, Trooping the Colour parades, cultural events, hospital openings, gardens, birthday celebrations, weddings, sporting events and on and on.

How did you gain access to the Royal Family? Did you have a press pass?

I only ever photographed the Royal Family as a member of the public, never with a press pass. While the press/ paparazzi often had the prime positions on their step ladders in their press pens (usually a barricaded area off limits to everyone else), members of the public were free to stand behind the other barricades lining the road. On occasion, some of the royals would break off and walk down the row of people- the famous ‘walkabout’. On two of these occasions, I was able to shake Princess Diana’s hand and speak with her.

Other times, there were no barricades, like at polo matches or sporting events, and I was able to get very close to the royals, once even standing shoulder to shoulder (literally) with Prince Andrew as we watched his wife Sarah take part in the horse trials at Ascot.

In the end, there was no substitute for arriving early, sometimes several hours before a royal appearance. And the reward for getting there early was having a prime position for photography, with no one in front of you, except a friendly policeman or two, which was often the case. You just had to hope they wouldn’t stand right in front of you when the time came to take your pictures.

With some of the lesser known royals, security was much more relaxed and there weren’t even any barricades set up. I was able to walk alongside them as they toured a location or met members of the public.

Obviously with all that waiting around for something to happen, you would get to know the people around you well, and I made many friends this way, some of whom I’m still in touch with today.

How many times did you photograph the Royal Family?

Over one hundred times– I’ve lost count. I know I photographed Diana over fifty times and the Queen more than thirty times, but after that, I’m not sure. I used to keep a running total, but I lost access to those records when the 1980’s-era computer they were stored on stopped working.

Have these pictures been published anywhere else?

Only a very small percentage of my Royal Family photos have ever been seen by the public until now; the negatives and transparencies have all been kept in storage for over thirty-five years. Good Morning America (ABC-TV in the US) used some of my pictures of Princess Diana when Prince Harry married Meghan Markle in 2018. The Discovery Channel in Canada used some pictures of Charles and Diana for a program about polo ponies in the late 1990’s. And the author of a very obscure book of poetry about Diana used one of my images on her cover as well. But most of the images, although all of them are over 35 years old, have never been seen before.

Have you thought about publishing a book of your pictures of the Royal Family?

Hopefully a book will be coming some time in the near future. Quality is very important to me. I’ve had experience publishing a coffee table book of my landscape photography, and I insisted on a beautiful layout and design, top quality binding and heavyweight paper– the result was a beautiful work of art but it was a long-term time-consuming project. I’d anticipate much the same for a royal photography book.

What do you think of Meghan and Harry? Are they good for the Royal Family?

I honestly don’t care. I’ve never followed all the gossipy stories about the royals; so many of them are rumours with no verifiable sources. And who really cares anyway? There are plenty of other websites to go to if you want to argue about Meghan and Harry, or you want to gush about Diana. When I would regularly photograph the royals 35 years ago, often several times in one week, they were just real people, with real problems just like the rest of us. Diana, whom I photographed over fifty times, was a normal woman thrown into extraordinary circumstances. I saw her happy, angry, sad, excited, laughing and very upset. I look at those pictures now and wonder what was going on inside her head at the time, knowing what we do now about her unhappy marriage to Charles. The problem now is that social media rumours spread like wildfire and many people believe them without questioning the sources. Follow the hundreds of amateur websites and social media pages dedicated to the Royal Family if you want to gossip about them. This site will never do that.

What cameras and films did you use to take the pictures?

All the photos were made using manual focus 35mm film cameras, mostly Canon cameras (A-1, T90 and AE-1 Program). Some of the non-royalty (People and Places collections) images were made using Hasselblad and Pentax medium format film cameras. Over twenty-five different films were used– mostly Kodak, Ilford, and Fujifilm stocks, which included Kodak Technical Pan 2415 and 6415, High Speed Infrared, Fuji Velvia and Sensia, and Kodachrome 64.

Why are there watermarks on all the photos? They’re distracting.

I wish I didn’t have to put watermarks on the pictures. But pictures of the Royal Family are some of the most stolen and mis-used photos on the internet. I regularly come across pictures of mine that were briefly posted many years ago– on Facebook pages, Instagram accounts and elsewhere. Without putting my name and URL on the pictures, no one would be able to trace those pictures back to me; my art just becomes anonymous and lost on the internet, with no link back to me at all. Please, don’t download and post these pictures anywhere else. It’s illegal and it’s stealing.