New Royal Portrait

Looking at the new Royal Portrait, I am reminded of karma mechanic's concerns about 'too much clutter' in photographs.

I quite like it actually. There is subtle symbolism in it all - the pose, the room etc.

I think they both look ill at ease

I'd definitely have cropped off the gilt chairs on the far right. The panels are sort of ok in spite of having a lot of light reflecting off them, but the chairs are definitely cluttery

I don't see how one could avoid 'clutter' in a photo taken in Buck Palace. What is surprising is the the photographer Thomas Struth took two and a half days to arrange the setting - according to the BBC comment on the portrait.

Martin

It's Windsor

The Queen probably only gives him about 5-10 minutes to get the picture so he has to be sure everything is right. He would need to decide on a location at Windsor, what lighting he needed etc etc, plus undoubtedly a few trail shots with stand ins.

Apparently 2.5 days in that room doing the set up.

It's unbalanced, but they probably wanted the Queen in the centre of the picture, but he could have made it look better balanced by putting something in the space on the right.

The Queen is also moved closer to the camera than the Duke.

Not a great example of portraiture, but on a par with a lot of stuff you see now days.

Edit:
SKY obviously don't give a dam about it being a work of art they've made their own crop They've cropped too much off the top and the bottom was never big enough anyway. They have improved the balance though by cropping off the right side.

link

The Queen is closer to the camera than the Duke on purpose, just as she is fully lit and he is partly in the shade.
She is the Queen, he lives in her shadow to a certain extent, and yet they are a couple. He is always there in the background helping and supporting her. Symbolism innit.

It's just a poor photograph and it's daft to depict them as you say Gwynn. Snowdons portrait didn't and he had the Duke in the middle of the picture.

link

In fact this is very poor when you compare it with Snowdons portraits of the Royal Family link

Compared to the recent lack-lustre picture the Snowdon ones in that article are a completely different class of photography - I'd say he's rather got the hang of it

This is a very considered picture (2.5 days!!!) and I can't believe that anything we are perceiving as 'clutter' or 'imbalance' is there out of sloppiness on the part of the photographer. This isn't some cheezy commercial portrait photographer you know - he's an artist with all sorts of interesting ideas about historical and social context etc!

There is a problem when we try and interpret this sort of work through the 'rule book' approach to photography pushed by the magazines and certain photography books.

Portrait photography (at the top level) is very much a rule book approach. There isn't a lot of room for moving away from the rules. This book link(there are better ones available) shows some of the rules particularly regarding the placement of hands i.e. always a side view.

Example of how not to photograph hands.... Mona Lisa link

I think I've found the reason that this portrait isn't to my liking
The photographer isn't even a portraitist he seems to be from an architectural background link

Sorry the last one had the wrong link link

450 portraits of the Queen here link

I've just seen the tiny pic in the Tele link above. I prefer the Sky crop. What I see of the full portrait is a lousy photo. It's fine as an official painterly symbolic dreary portrait, to line up with its dreary ilk. But as a photographic portrait, it sucks. Imbalance, intrusive background, stodgy posing -- waxworks dummies are more alive. Long ago, my job included producing (un)official portraits. If I had shown work like this, I would quickly be out of a job. Can't Struth be hanged or something?