When Princess Charlotte’s 11th birthday portrait landed on social media this morning, many couldn’t help but notice how she just looked like a normal kid enjoying her time outdoors. There was none of the pretense that people have come to expect from official royal portraits.
In her birthday photo, Charlotte has a beaming smile as she stands in a daisy field in Cornwall, England. She’s wearing a striped jumper and jeans, and her long hair falls loosely around her shoulders. It really felt less like an official royal portrait and more like a frame from a home video that was warm and real.
Matt Porteous took Princess Charlotte’s 11th birthday photograph, and he has a way of capturing Prince William, Princess Kate, and their family that shows how they are a different sort of royal family. If you follow royal coverage closely, you’ve probably seen his work dozens of times without necessarily knowing his name. According to Hello Magazine, Porteous also shot the accompanying birthday video released later in the day, in which Charlotte plays on the beach, pets the family dogs, and writes messages in the sand. It’s the kind of footage that makes a royal family feel like any other family on holiday in Cornwall, a beautiful spot in the southwest of England.
Today’s releases are just the latest chapter in a relationship between Porteous and the Wales family that stretches back nearly a decade. As reported by multiple royal outlets, his first royal commission came in 2016 for Prince George’s third birthday. The photo was shared on The Royal Family’s Instagram page.
From there, the trust only deepened. Matt Porteous was invited to document the christening of Prince Louis at Clarence House. He shot the official portraits of George’s fifth birthday, and he served as the official photographer at Pippa Middleton and James Matthews’ wedding in 2017. Porteous recently also captured a photo of Prince William and Princess Kate with their children to celebrate their 15th wedding anniversary.
Known for taking photos that are beautified with natural light and emotional depth, what makes Porteous unusual in the world of royal photography is where he comes from and where his lens is pointed when he isn’t photographing palaces. He grew up in Jersey, a small island in the Channel Islands that lies between Great Britain and France. While growing up, he took his first yellow, underwater Minolta camera everywhere, and he used the camera to capture the beauty he saw in the natural world.
On the Jersey website, Porteous wrote, “I love Jersey. No matter where you are on the island, you are never more than ten minutes from the sea. The twice-daily change of 30-foot tides resembles the beating heart and lifeline of our island. There’s so much beauty around us here and, as a photographer, that’s my passion – to be a storyteller and capture my surroundings as I see them. Real beauty is found in the natural world that’s all around us.”
Matt Porteous spent his early adulthood working in masonry, then decided to rebuild his life around his passion for photography when he was around 30 years old. He opened up about this part of his life in a video for Ocean Culture, an organization he founded for ocean storytellers.
Porteous has a love for the natural world that runs through everything he does. He also founded Studio M, a visual content studio of photographers and filmmakers.
Alongside his royal commissions, Porteous remains deeply involved with Ocean Culture to connect ocean conservation storytellers with wider audiences. He has a way of making the extraordinary look effortless, and that’s a great talent for a photographer who shows the world that the royals are just humans like everyone else.
The birthday portrait of Charlotte is the latest photo in a series of images that show how the Wales family have an ordinary life together in many ways. Prince William and Princess Kate have always seemed to be more down-to-earth royals, and that seems to be true for their children, too. Matt Porteous has a talent for capturing moments that are both special and ordinary in the best ways.