The change in tone has been immediate, ever since Reuters, Getty, AFP and Associated Press killed the Prince and Princess of Wales’s Mother’s Day frankenphoto. The image was heavily manipulated, and Kensington Palace failed to respond to those media agencies’ inquiries for clarification or for an “unmanipulated” photo. The global director of AFP compared KP to North Korea and Iran and international media agencies have made it clear that everything coming out of KP is now being considered untrustworthy and possibly manipulated propaganda.
Over the weekend, two big things happened. One, a source close to William and Kate (an advisor, even) claimed that those media agencies were “hypocritical” for killing the frankenphoto, because those agencies had run manipulated photos before. Two, the Guardian confirmed something which had been speculated/known for a while, which is that Kate’s photo of QEII and her great-grandchildren (released last year) was a heavily manipulated photo too. Now Getty has added an editor’s note to the image to indicate that Kate manipulated the photo.
A photograph of Queen Elizabeth II surrounded by her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, taken by the Princess of Wales, was “digitally enhanced at source”, a global picture agency has said. The photo, taken at Balmoral in August 2022, was reviewed by Getty Images after the Princess admitted that she had edited a Mother’s Day picture of herself and her three children.
Buckingham Palace released it on April 21 last year to mark what would have been the late Queen’s 97th birthday.A spokesman for Getty said: “Getty Images has reviewed the image in question and placed an editor’s note on it, stating that the image has been digitally enhanced at source.”
Close inspection of the picture appears to show several inconsistencies, including a vertical line where the tartan of the late Queen’s skirt does not match.
A dark shadow is visible behind Prince Louis’s ear, and a similar small black patch can be seen behind Prince George’s shirt collar. There are also signs of digital repetition of Mia Tindall’s hair.
Earlier this month, the Princess’s Mother’s Day picture was withdrawn by several news agencies, which issued a “kill” notice, because of the extent to which it had been manipulated.
The latest development will come as a blow to the Princess, a keen amateur photographer, who is understood to have been distressed by the furore surrounding the more recent image. Both she and Prince William are keen to move on from the drama and put the focus back on their work.
Literally, on Saturday, official royal sources were crying to Roya Nikkhah at the Times about those big, mean hypocrites at Getty, Reuters, AFP and AP and how it’s so unfair because they’ve totally published frankenphotos before! And now Getty is like “oh what’s that??” I hope all of the other agencies follow suit and tag all of the older KP photo handouts and make a really big show of it. If Kensington Palace is going to try to “call out” Reuters and Getty, amateur photographer Kate is going to see ALL of her photos turned into fiascos.
Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing. I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused. I hope everyone celebrating had a very happy Mother’s Day. C
— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) March 11, 2024
Photos courtesy of Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace.
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Wow they are really going in on more of the fake photos. They poked the bear and the bear is none too happy. I too believe that more should question a lot of the older pictures.
Kate or whoever was responsible for editing the photos should just straight up say, look it’s impossible to get a decent photo from a group of kids. It’s like herding cats. I have to take 50 shots of my 2 kids just to get one decent shot where they’re not making a silly face, not moving, and just giving me a decent smile, holding still, and not trying to embarrass the other one. You can’t release a photo of 7 kids and the queen that is less than ‘perfect’.
It’s not just about having a perfect photo of kids who were present. Pretty sure Louis wasn’t there, but was dropped in.
But that’s the thing, it doesn’t have to be perfect, it has to be real. Kate’s not a professional, it’s OK for her photos to be less than. They are. And that’s OK.
Did they put an editor’s note on the photo with QE2 and prince P on the couch with the white grandkids? Bc I these photos are like stereograms or those stereoscopic images – I feel like I’ve gone cross-eyed and see effects of Photoshop everywhere.
I mean, doesn’t Charlotte look like she’s levitating? There are no shadows of her feet. George looks like his head and shirt are pasted onto some other kid. If I keep staring, every single man woman and baby looks photoshopped in. JFC.
I didn’t realize before how many pics they got of QE2 with her grandchildren / great-grandchildren. Now, it looks extra sh*tty that the palace don’t have any public pics of her with H&M’s children. The last time they visited, the sources were crying that H&M were banned from taking a pic with QE2.
Gosh. Once a Middleton always a Middleton. If there’s a con to be made that family will find one. It wasn’t enough that the mother conned innocent creditors out of millions. We now find that the daughter not only conned a prince into marrying her, she’s also been conning the public as well with her phony photo skills. How arrogant must you be to believe that once professional organisation got wind of your deceptions they wouldn’t go back and check. Kate, her husband and the rest of her family of grifters are finding out the hard way that outside the UK their actions really do have consequences.
And conned people into believing she was a self made multi millionaire!!!!
🤣🤣🤣🤣. The whole lot of them too!!!
I do wonder how many of those “perfect family” photos from Kate and Will are doctored – and how much they are doctored?
I wonder how many were not.
At this point it would be highly appreciated if a news site went through every single photo and tagged every single one that was suspicious. This piecemeal approach when it’s clearly the tip of the iceberg is annoying.
That is exactly what I am curious to find out, I hope cnn follows through and we get some answers.
The talking heads are minimizing Kate’s FAKE photo, not caring what this has done to the images and reputations of the worldwide distributors of these images. Treating them as they treated Meghan as they over saw the tearing down of her reputation while a working Royal and after she left. These Royal billionaires care for nothing but themselves.
I feel Kate is too lazy to do the photoshopping herself, she just asks some intern to make the changes she wants. But some of these are so bad maybe she did actually do some herself?
Isn’t it more than photoshop; isn’t the whole point that this is like the mother’s day and actually moving towards doctoring? Love the name by the way. You sound like a fellow Brit, because that is our weather forecast pretty much until a heatwave.
By the way, remember this composite FAKE picture of Queen Elizabeth and the great-grand kids was used as a cudgel to attack Archie, Lili, and Meghan & Harry.
Wow – this is the gift that is just continuing to give. I wonder how many more of these are going to have these sort of notes added to them. To me I think she’s been cutting out and editing her kids and then putting them back in, covering her tracks by editing the eff everywhere else to make her kids look the best.
I really hope they stop letting her take photo’s intended to be released to the public – they should make good use of Natasha Archers husband, who’s a proper and respected photographer who they have used before. Either that do what the US Presidents do and get a proper photographer on staff.
Yup, pretty much.
Look, I have kids and they weren’t always in the mood to be photographed, but essentially since digital cameras, you just take a bunch of pictures and ar least one will be fine. And these specific children are literally being forced/ trained to grow up in public. Are we supposed to believe that they don’t know how to pose for pictures from the age of 3 or 4? I just looked at my kids’ photos from back then: I just don’t understand why we’re supposed to think that the children are out of control all the time.
This is the start of their being undone as a truthful source. So many aspects to Kate’s photography and what it means, but one strain of it has been her lauded role as the royal family’s photo chronicler. The whole thing is shoddy, and that’s it for her as a photographer; it’s sad, in a way, because it seemed to be her ‘thing’.
Hahaha BUSTED.
KP are basically Britain’s version of Trump at this point. Or rather the unholy alliance between the RF and the Tories, put together, is pure Trump.
The DM even tried to drag the spanish royal family into this photo mess, don’t complain when the Spanish media say that Kate is a coma again.
This composite FAKE picture of Queen Elizabeth and the great-grand kids imagine two scenarios. GIRST SCENARIO: Kate at night thinking to herself here’s a treat for the world the Queen pictured with all of her great-grands! But I can’t include Archie & Lili Meghan might spill the beans about this picturing being FAKE. SECOND SCENARIO: Here’s a treat for the world, an imagery world where Archie and Lili don’t exist. Let’s give the conspiracist some chum.
@SCAR – I have to disagree about Archie and Lili. Kate did offer to take Archie’s baby photos but, Meghan declined. I can remember jokingly asking the question has the Express just outed Kate as the royal racist because of Meghan saying why should I let people take pictures of my baby when they’ve called him the N word. Little did I know!
I’m glad she didn’t get the chance to take Archie’s photo. If she’s brazen enough to manipulate images with QEII, can you imagine what she might do with to pictures of a baby she had “concerns” about?
I’m sure the Queen was photoshopped into the photo with all the white grandkids too.
And while they are at it they need to look at the photo of Archie’s christening with Kate on a chair and William standing beside her. There’s something off about that photo and it looks, to me, like Kate and William were added later? The image is sharper of those 2 and they seem just a little bigger than everyone else?
I had heard that too. When you look at that photo, Kate looks proportionately larger. At the time, commenters said that it was from an earlier photo of Kate. Also, it was said that Diana’s two sisters would never have been in the same room as Camilla, let alone in a picture with her. Maybe the photo shopping goes way beyond the two photos that are now being scrutinized.
Kate is really exposed here. Consider the full context: “Kate” has already personally apologied for, and thereby taken responsibility for, manipulating the Mother’s Day frankenphoto to such an appalling degree that an international k*ll order was issued. And here she is directly linked to the manipulation of a historic photo of QEII – an incredible offense on its own. But let’s also remember that we now know that Kate was one of the royal racists exposed as being hateful and disgusting about baby Archie’s potential skin color. And then she decided to purposefully manipulate a photo of all the Queen’s white great grandchildren, specifically so that her tabloid rota rat pets could abuse the Sussexes about Archie and Lili being excluded.
And THEN, consider that since Kate seems to enjoy using her “art” in this particular way, I think it’s also worth revisiting how on Earth it’s possible that an art history major would be totally naive to and unaware of the implications of having *that* painting hanging in pride of place when the Obamas visited KP.
It’s absolutely disgusting and she deserves to be called out by the international media for it. We need these dots connected.
She certainly should have learned about the use of imagery throughout history & how faking images might affect the historic record. But everybody has said she wasn’t the sharpest tack in class.
At this point every photo kate has taken can be considered altered.
I do believe the professional photographers wouldn’t risk anything because their careers would be ended if they were accused of that.
But of course the princess doesn’t need to follow rules.
The photo with the Queen, Philip and the great grandchildren looks manipulated too.
It’s going to be interesting to see how they put new pictures forward. You’d think they’d have to stop the photo manipulation but are they even capable of that?
At this point, are we sure that any of them exist at all?
The photo of the Queen and Prince Philip is especially egregious. It looks like a joke photo where the Photoshop is supposed to be obvious. Beyond the fact they clearly weren’t together in front of the castle, they don’t even look like they pulled their shots from the same event. This what they deserve though. They spent years encouraging the media to parse everything Harry and Meghan said to find some conflict somewhere to paint them as liars who can’t be trusted so that no one would believe their accounts of mistreatment , and here’s it is for them live and in color.
I feel like Kaiser is baiting press agencies to add notices to this photo as well!
1. I don’t believe Kate put out the apology statement over the Mother’s Day pic. I think William did. 2. If Kate is distressed, it’s because she got caught for the lying phony she is. 3. Get back to work? What work?
They’ve harassed and bullied Meghan for years, the better part of a decade, and can’t stand this heat? I hope this lasts until at least one of them calls ‘uncle’ !
Photoshop aside, I love the one with the queen and baby Charlotte looking at each other, that’s cute.
That is my favorite, too, so sweet; I’m going to be bummed if that one turns out to have been faked.
Basically they have just confirmed what we all know, the Royals are all smoke and mirrors where you see everything but nothing at the same time. Keen manipulates the press and people to see and hear only what she wants. Problem is, she started to believe her own publicity. It’s gone, the illusion has disappeared once a light was shone on it. Any and every reporter or agency, will now question and call out EVERYTHING released by the Palace. So stand by for 1000s of pictures of the kids and Charlie being wheeled out to deflect. Next week it will be Harry and Megan bad, but, but, but do we KNOW that or have we been publishing the wrong way around. Yep, when the press start asking those type of questions, the monarchy, or just keen, is gone
The work? Focus on the work? Ok. But where is it?
They’re so mad that people focus on all the Tom foolery they do, and people don’t focus on the work they don’t do.
We had a staff meeting this morning to go over some upcoming events this week. My boss asked if anyone could help take pictures for SM, since she’s not a very good photographer and didn’t want to have a Kate Middleton situation. I didn’t think our CEO even knew about any of that lol, but I guess Kate really has conquered America. Sorry, William!