Thorsten Overgaard

The matter of cropping out all life of ... well life. For the sake of celebrity.

What I mean is that the way to shoot celebrities has become to point a 400mm lens at them and crop away their shoulders and all. Just a face.

I like to shoot things so that there's a story somewhere there. Thankfully I have some mags where I decide myself. This one I might use as a full-page later this year:

Ha, a shot like that would never stand a chance in the normal weeklies where they usually stuff a page with eight or twelve photos.

But standing there, I thought to myself, "what really matters here?" Those dudes next to me shoot portraits with their tele lenses but it's a beautiful day at a nice and quiet castle, with a relaxed and casual royal family sitting here. The crown prince even barefooted in some old shoes. It's grand. It's very Danish.

I thought about my uber-royal aunt, my mother who hate royals, and how they will often sit and discuss the royals in the weeklies. They look at how old they look now, the dresses, how old the kids has grown and then they might even start discussing the flowers."The queen is very good with flower," my aunt would say. "Ha! She doesn't touch them herself. She has staff to do that" and that will be the beginning of a hourlong discussion that will end on some entire differnt subject out of this universe.

But hey, that is what a royal photograph is supposed to do.

My brother will look at their windows and the roof and get into what kind of this or that they used. Royal garden furniture can be quite an intersting study if you want to be royal in your tasteyourself. You know.

One thing they will always get around, I've notices, is the husbands. If he looks old, good, grumpy and stuff. A womans husband is always an interesting subject (I'll make an important note to myself about always to include the husbands).

What I mean: Who gives a f-.-k about a cropped face. That is only for grapping attention. Then there should be a real story after that you have gotten the attention. Not a series of cropped faces and events. People like to study pictures of people, their interrelations, their life, houses, kids, cars and all.

(I know I'm more interested in which car Paris Hilton drives than in where she drowe it).

So, that above picture is the kind of picture that would start a family discussion in our family. It's made for that kind of people.

But for sure it's not going to sell. The first one might become a moneyshot, but unfortunately I'm sure some of the real cropped stuff will sell even better. Those of a face where you won't be able to tell if it was taken in rain in Spain or at a 200 year old castle in Denmark.

Here is by the way how it looks from the sideline. 36 media people lined up to the left.