B.T.S*

At first glance it looks like a little old lady sheltering from the rain. Maybe she’s waiting for a bus. Look closer and the pensioner turns out to be the Queen.

She was opening the Lawn Tennis Association’s new headquarters just outside London, and I’d been assigned the classic royal photo opportunity of her planting a tree or cutting a ribbon. Possibly both. I honestly can’t remember.

I arrived hours early, endured the usual security checks, and joined the inevitable stampede toward the press pen. My spot was, frankly, a bit shit.

It was raining. Properly raining. We were soaked. The Queen arrived beneath a transparent umbrella and it became clear we were in entirely the wrong place for the picture we’d all imagined. 

We could all see exactly where the photograph needed to be taken from and it wasn’t inside the pen.

So I made a quick calculation and thought Fuck It and jumped the fence.

Quick light reading. 70–200mm lens. Heart racing. I ran the few metres to the right spot, fired off a handful of frames, and hopped back in to the pen before security had time to react.

The pictures ran everywhere over the following days. The next year, much to my own amusement I was named Royal Photographer of the Year. A few years after that, the image was selected for the Royal Collection. 

My takeaway? The best pictures generally aren’t taken from inside a press pen.