Category Archives: Leica

My Reportage On The Wedding Of

Prince William To Kate Middleton

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It’s been a hectic few weeks. The pressure of the Royal wedding has resulted in many meetings, emails, phone calls and Tweets between colleagues, picture editors, technicians and press officers.

With a story as huge as this, with all of it’s logistical nightmares as far as security, bureaucracy, cost and locations are concerned, one photojournalist just couldn’t tell the entire story. Looking through the papers, “Fleet Street’s” finest did a superb job; there are stunning images of the couple from every angle and every moment covered by my colleagues. The page designers at the papers also pulled the stops out and produced magnificent work. The highest accolade though must be paid to photographer Max Mumby with his stunning picture of the couple driving away in the Aston Martin; The Times did an amazing job of running this as their front page and even went as far as doing a complete wrap with another wrap picture on the inside; genius. It’s these collection of images which told the story in it’s entirety. Although part of me really wanted to witness the wedding itself, I had other plans.

My way of covering the story was more aimed at the magazine market for which my agency Polaris Images specialises. I decided to look at how Londoners were effected by the wedding, starting from all the memorabilia being offered for sale to the Royal super fans camping out days before the event at Westminster Abbey and The Mall near Buckingham Palace. For this aspect I visited the super fans at night and also during the day.

For the actual day, I had spent well over a month talking with various people who were organising street parties and finally found what I hoped would be perfect for my needs; a small road in Brentford with a nice little pub called the Lord Nelson. On the day after a slow start it did end up offering some of what I had wished for!

For anyone wishing to buy images for publication, please contact Polaris Images or visit my Photoshelter site.

Technically, I used a Leica M9 and 50mm f0.95 Noctilux ASPH for the majority of this work. The first night was shot entirely on a Leica X1. For other shots, I used a Canon 5D MkII with the 135mm f2L, 45mm TS-E and 15mm f2.8 Fisheye. All image processing was done in Apple’s Aperture 3 and Nik Software’s Silver Efex Pro 2.

I’m thrilled to say that this project is also featured on Steve Huff’s website, where there is more information on behind the scenes stuff.

To see the entire edit of images, of which there is also a colour set, please visit:

(NB – although there are some identical images in both sets, they are different)

Flickr – B/W Set

Flickr – Colour Set