Before becoming engulfed in the Epstein scandal, Prince Andrew attempted to deviate from his royal duties through photography. Renowned photographer Gene Nocon revealed in 2011 that Prince Andrew was very serious about his photography and worked as his technical assistant to nurture his instinctive aesthetic eye. Encouraged by one or two individuals, Prince Andrew released a photography book in 1995, an unprecedented move for a royal.
The book's foreword described it as a small slice of autobiography recording memories and impressions through his eyes and the lens of a camera. Prince Andrew wrote in the book that it was by him as a tyro-photographer rather than as a member of the Royal Family. It featured members of the Royal Family and actress Finola Hughes, offering a rare glimpse into the life of a senior working royal.
This is a book by me, tyro-photographer, rather than by me, member of the Royal Family.
The book received an incredibly poor reception globally and was branded sad and pathetic by the Los Angeles Times. Public criticism was heavily directed at two images of a young Prince Harry: one showing him clutching a bucket and spade on the Royal Yacht Britannia, and another capturing him on a swing facing away from the camera. Tim Hughes, then associate editor of the British Journal of Photography, described the images of Harry as technically very poor.
Professor John Hedgecoe, head of photography at the London School of Art, described Harry's eyes as black slits and his face just like a mask. Kodak's head of customer relations criticized the swing image, saying it was an absolute mess and suggesting it would have been better to remove the child from the swing altogether due to the rope cutting across his face. Prince Andrew admitted in an ITN interview that the two photographs of Harry technically weren't particularly brilliant.
Technically they weren't particularly brilliant.
He explained that the swing image was challenging because Prince Charles was pushing Harry out of short. Speaking from Buckingham Palace, Prince Andrew said he believed the point of the images of Harry had been missed by the public. In the year before the book's release, Prince Andrew broke a brand-new £1,800 Hasselblad camera.
A small baby, what was everybody expecting? Were they expecting a Snowdon like portrait? I'm not that brilliant.