Prince Louis’ birthday photo

[PrettyFlyforaMaiTai]

I was worried that Catherine might not release a birthday photo of Louis this year what with what her diagnosis and the mothers’ day photo fiasco. But she has released an image on the Prince & Princess of Wales instagram page.

Happy 6th birthday Louis! Isn’t he a mini Michael Middleton?

I remember a RF thread on which a poster was criticising the Daily Mail and Daily Express and it became clear that s/he was the only poster who had read the 'royal' articles in the Express despite being so very critical of it.

I avoid the Express because it's so badly written, unless I'm having a nose at a piece by David Maddox, a political editor, on his analysis of Trump. The Mail has some good stuff by e.g. Julie Bindel and Maya Forstater. I'll read anything from the Morning Star to the Financial Times.

"I posted at the time of that ridiculous Mother's Day scripted outrage, that the Photo Agencies/Press were shooting themselves in the foot. "

They weren't, you know. They were simply doing what they had to do to maintain their professional reputation as a news agency.

I posted at the time of that ridiculous Mother's Day scripted outrage, that the Photo Agencies/Press were shooting themselves in the foot. The Waleses have apparently decided to just bypass them and release photos via their own SM, and didn't send it out the night before as with previous Birthday photos. Good for them.

And it’s been copied from their social media and used on newspaper front pages and in news broadcasts and media tweets worldwide ever since, all of which is revenue lost to the picture agencies who would normally get paid by the entities who use the image in that way. I wonder if we’ll see the same approach taken with Charlotte’s birthday next week

People that say he’s cute, can say that because it’s what they see. You can’t see if a child is a rascal, which implies he’s mischievous at best, with some posters previously having commented on him being ‘naughty’ of even having ADHD, because as a toddler/young child he pulled a few funny faces and fidgeted. It’s completely different.

George has been given the label of shy, Charlotte as the confident leader and Louis as the lovable rogue by the tabloids, all before they even got out of the toddler years. It’s a shame but it’s what the papers will continue to do to these 3 children as they become teens and adults.

They weren't, you know. They were simply doing what they had to do to maintain their professional reputation as a news agency.

Agreed, but there are ways, and there are ways of doing that. Issuing the kill notice was presumably fully justified under their T&Cs, but there was nothing stopping any of them issuing a statement explaining exactly why the photograph had failed their standards. Which they didn’t, and hence the conspiracy theories swirled…

Do the palaces use agencies?

I thought they just released them themselves and they were available to all-comers for free. Agencies may or may not choose to carry them (and their packages might be paid subscription only) but they don't make anything specifically on officially released images, do they?

The Palace have previously released images officially to the photo agencies at the same time as they post them on their own social media. Media organisations will then usually buy the images from the photo agencies that they subscribe to, for use in the their own broadcasts/publications/tweets etc.

Some may just copy the images from the social media feed (the BBC admitted to doing this with the Mother’s Day photo that started the whole kerfuffle, in order to get their story out as quickly as possible) but most will take the images from the photo agencies (as I presume that’s a very easy process for them to use, as they will do this all day every day on all sorts of stories).

Also, the Palace has previously released photos such as the one of Louis to the photo agencies the evening before the birthday, so they are available to the papers to use on their front pages the next day. I’m not sure whether they then released it on their own social media channels at the same time, or waited until the actual birthday?

(and yes, photo agencies are paid a fee for every photo downloaded from their sites)

"Nobody knows anything about him" isn't really true, is it, since he's the child of the future king and queen and has made numerous public appearances with his siblings from a very young age.

I shall clarify - nobody knows if this child is a rascal, is shy, is mare hearted, is cheeky, is brave, is sensible or is serious. We of course know who he is. I’m simply saying it’s not fair to speculate on the children and to leave them alone. I agree they have what appears to be a nice life (their lives are far from normal) with parents who are doing their best for them - I think we the public should do the same and in their interest, leave them alone, insofar as to comment on nice pictures but leave the commentary to things that are objectively observable but not speculative.

@Serenster "there was nothing stopping any of them issuing a statement explaining exactly why the photograph had failed their standards. Which they didn’t, and hence the conspiracy theories swirled...."

But anyone with rudimentary googling skills could find out. It wasn't the agency's role to explain. And in fact, explaining would have meant they had to say that the Wales' had been disingenuous on their SM.

But anyone with rudimentary googling skills could find out. It wasn't the agency's role to explain.

Everyone had to speculate about what elements of the picture had meant the various agencies issued the kill notices, when they could have said. they chose not to. Their decision, of course. But one that leads to direct financial consequences for them. Someone should be reviewing that decision internally now, I would hope!

"Everyone had to speculate about what elements of the picture had meant the various agencies issued the kill notices, when they could have said."
Which would have directly implicated the POW in the incident.

@CurlewKate you speak of the issues regarding the Mother’s Day photo as though the Princess of Wales did something sinister or criminal.
She didn’t have to worry about being “implicated”, she released her statement clarifying that she had indeed edited her photograph. As thousands of people do every single day on social media. It wasn’t disingenuous to just want a perfect photo to be put out. The editing didn’t even change that much in that, the same people were there at the same time and their faces weren’t edited.
The people online who picked the photo apart are the ones who are disingenuous in their pursuit of bullying.

@MummyJ12 "CurlewKate you speak of the issues regarding the Mother’s Day photo as though the Princess of Wales did something sinister or criminal"

I'm not. I'm saying she did something that meant her picture was not suitable for agency syndication. And the agencies were right to not engage any more than they would do with anyone else.

Thankfully, they don’t need to rely upon these agencies and from what we can gather, since they posted the photo of Prince Louis yesterday, they will be bypassing the agencies from now on. They have 16 million followers on Instagram alone so can easily reach their global audience without them.

And people say he's a rascal or whatever because it's what they see. Looks or behaviour, all anyone outside the family sees is a snapshot, and deciding one child looks like X and another like Y can be just as damaging (just ask Prince Harry). In any event, I was pointing out the hypocrisy of telling other posters off about one whilst indulging in the other.

No child should be labelled in this way for perfectly ordinary child appropriate behaviour. It is damaging.

You can see what/who a child looks like from photos and seeing them for a very short time at an event. You can’t know a child’s character from a photo or by seeing them for a very short time at an event. It’s very different.

Well he (assuming you mean the Prince of Wales) was already implicated as the picture was credited to him when it was released.

If you mean the Princess, not necessarily. If they had thought to make a statement along the lines of “We regret the need to take this step, but we have very strict standards what we can host as a news image. On analysis, we determined that some elements of this picture (in particular, the cuff of Charlotte’s sleeve) shows signs of having been manipulated using enhancement software. This is a breach of our terms and conditions for media images and as a result we can no longer host this image” they would have obviated the need for the princess to make her own statement about the controversy, quelled some of the speculation that the whole photo was completely faked (rather than was a series of real images that had been stitched together) and probably preserved their commercial relationship with the Palace.

Their call though.

I agree.

The photo was released on social media. It was not sent to the photo agencies. Any photos released on social media do not have to meet photo agencies standards.
I am not saying there is any issues with the photo, but it is different to the previous photo that was sent to the photo agencies.

It's just as damaging depending on the circumstances, eg remark about Louis not looking like his siblings or his father. Where have we heard that before? I am talking about the hypocrisy of commenting on looks and deciding this is fair game when comments on behaviour are not for the same poster. And you are taking just as much of a hypocritical stance.

@Serenster Not for the agencies to say that publicly. They will have told the Palace- it was then up to them how much they decided to make public.

I would disagree. They had zero issues with posting clearly altered photos of several celebs over the years.

The MD photo didn't meet their T&Cs as a "news photo" - they could have released a statement explaining clearly why that was and what about the photo was an issue.

As a non news photo is was fine - they chose the criteria and didn't explain what that was (even only altering red eye in a news photos breaches their standards).

They chose to feed the conspiracists IMO.

I believe, and am happy to be corrected if so, the MD photo was also released to photo agencies as well as being on SM. The photos agencies decided it was a "news" photo, not a personal one.

This most recent photo was solely released via their IG.

Well played William and Catherine 👏👏👏.