The photographer behind one of the most iconic royal pictures of the last decade has revealed the significant detail he faked during the shoot.
Jason Bell – who was chosen to take the official family portraits at Prince George’s christening in 2013 – opened up in a new documentary, Portrait of the Queen, about the pressure to get everything exactly right.
In one picture, the Queen and her four heirs – then-Prince Charles, Prince William and Prince George – were captured sitting together, marking the first image of its kind in more than a century.
In order to nail the tone of the day, Bell admitted he had to fake daylight outside the windows of the Morning Room at Clarence House, where the photo shoot took place.
“A christening picture is a happy picture and when I think about happy, I think about sort of summer and sun and light and bright,” he said.
“So I think in a way, that was my first creative decision going into it; I want it to feel like a beautiful, warm, summery afternoon.
“Obviously, the problem with that was I was actually doing the shoot in October in London and, you know, I’m a longtime Londoner, and I know that you can’t rely on London weather.
“So what I did was I put big heavy lights around all of the windows and the window behind them outside in the street. And, you know, to get enough light coming through the windows to really feel like a sort of summer afternoon, you know, you need quite a lot of light.”
Bell went on to explain that he had to do a lot of preparation before the big day.
“It’s always important to research around the project and you know, see what people have done before – who goes where. Where does the Queen go? Where does Prince George go?” he said in the documentary.
“You’re thinking about the sort of lineage, if you like, and the structure of the picture wants to reflect [that].”
Despite the high-profile and formal nature of the occasion, Bell said he was struck by one unexpected detail.
“The personal element of it, you know, is the same as it is in any other family and that’s kind of interesting watching, you know, them be a family together if you like … I was quite drawn to that,” he said.
Prior to the iconic 2013 picture, the last time a monarch was photographed with her three heirs was in 1894, when Queen Victoria posed with the newly christened future King Edward VIII, his father, Prince George, the Duke of York, and his grandfather, Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales – who went on to become King Edward VII.