Royally creative! Duchess Kate and Queen Elizabeth II are more similar than some may expect.
“This #WorldPhotographyDay, here are a few moments where The Queen has been pictured behind the lens,” the royal family’s official Twitter account shared on Thursday, August 19, alongside three pictures of the queen, 95, with a camera in her hands.
Kate, 39, has been vocal about her love of taking photos, often showcasing her skills with candid snaps of her family life with Prince William and their three kids: Prince George, 8, Princess Charlotte, 6, and Prince Louis, 3. However, the little ones aren’t too fond of being captured in their mom’s lens.
“Everyone’s like, ‘Mummy, please stop taking photographs!'” the Duchess of Cambridge joked during a conversation with photographer Ceri A. Edwards in June.
One year prior, Kate announced the beginning of a new photo initiative during the coronavirus pandemic. “We’ve all seen some incredible images out there and heard some amazing stories — some desperately sad stories, but also some really uplifting ones as well,” she told Britain’s This Morning in May 2020. “I really hope that through a project like this, we might be able to showcase some of those stories and to document and share a moment in time, I suppose, that we’re all experiencing.”
The royal family member wanted “to help capture the spirit, the hopes, the fears and feelings of the U.K. as we continue to deal with the coronavirus,” she explained at the time, highlighting “resilience and bravery, humor and sadness, creativity and kindness, and human tragedy and hope.”
Shortly before she launched the artistic venture, royal photographer Samir Hussein called Kate a “really keen photographer” in her own right.
“You can see from the pictures she takes that she’s better, certainly better than your average person on the streets,” Hussein told Us Weekly exclusively in April 2020. “She’s got a good eye, and she’s a good photographer. I’m impressed by her pictures, absolutely.”
Having worked closely with Kate and her husband, 39, over the years — including on their wedding day in April 2011 — Hussein has noticed the pair become “much more relaxed” in front of the camera.
“They tend to be a bit more jokey,” he told Us. “They’re just a lot more relaxed, so I think that’s where I get a lot of my best pictures and you can see a bit more of their personality come out.”
