include VAT NIKON - ARTHUR EDWARDS days in incredible heat waiting to get my shots, and it was very exciting but very pressurised. Kate had this amazing look of love on her face that only a mother has for her child, and that was what I wanted to capture. There were thousands of pictures taken that evening, and if I’d dropped dead of a heart attack the newspaper would still have had images from all the other press photographers, but it’s your own pictures that count. Everything else I’ve done this year has been ‘another job’, but this was the future king. And to have been there 31 years ago when the man holding this baby was brought out of that same hospital, well, it was an emotional moment, very special. Nothing can compare to it. My relationship with the royal family When you work with a family for over 30 years, things happen to shape their view of you, and your view of them. It wasn’t so great at rst – it was very aggressive in the 1980s, when everything was about getting the pictures and there was a lot of intrusion into their lives, so they were anti to start with. When Prince Charles rst moved into But it slowly got better, and now I have a pretty good relationship with all the royals. Over the years I’ve grown to like them all very much, especially Prince Charles. I’m never familiar and I never ask personal questions. He calls me Arthur and I call him Sir – but he acknowledged both my 60th and 70th birthdays with cards and a gift. My Nikon kit When I rst started out I had a Leica, but it used to take three months to get a repair done. Then I got my rst Nikon, the F2. I got great service, I felt comfortable with it and I’ve been with Nikon ever since. The lenses are the best, the cameras are the best; nothing can touch them. I’ve never known a time when camera equipment was so brilliant. I’m still excited about Nikon, about Nikon products and about the fact that they keep bringing out all the right lenses for the job. NIKKORs are brilliant, crisp and unbelievably sharp. I’ve got the new 80-400mm on loan – although it’s F4.5-5.6, I just put the ISO up on my D4 and it’s fantastic, especially with the vibration reduction on. I took it to Sydney for Prince Harry’s trip because I reckoned it would be the perfect lens to take on a royal tour, and it was. It gave me some cracking portraits of Harry, plus great shots of everything going on around him. But the 24-70mm F2.8 is my favourite – it’s the most incredible lens ever made. One of the great things about Nikon is that you get such fabulous quality and so little noise at high ISOs so you don’t need to use ash as much – and the Queen and Nelson Mandela hate ash, so it’s a real advantage, especially indoors. It’s been the major breakthrough in digital as far as I’m concerned. Until a year ago I was using the D3S, and I loved it; I was constantly amazed at the pictures I got with it. But if you don’t move with new technology it leaves you behind, so I switched to the D4, and it’s tremendous. I also have the D800, mainly for personal use; I use it with a 35mm or 50mm lens for holidays, birthdays and christenings, and I get some really exciting pictures on it. I don’t tend to use it professionally because I need to work fast and I don’t want to be switching cameras mid-job, so I prefer to carry two D4 bodies and keep the D800 in my car if I need to do portraits, because it gives such great results with them. What being a photographer means to me For a boy who left school at 15 in the East End of London I’ve had an incredible life through photography. I seem to have achieved nearly all my ambitions, and I don’t think many people can say that. Yes, there’s aggravation with every job – I get soaking wet, I miss ights – but the pluses are that I work with great reporters and editors, there’s real camaraderie with my colleagues, and I get to do amazing things. I’m now 73 and I’m pretty active, I go to the gym three times a week, and I have a wife who is totally supportive. Many years ago David Frost told me, ‘If you love what you do, don’t stop doing it’, so as long as I’m healthy and the company supports me, I’ll carry on. When I turned 70, Rupert Murdoch sent me a letter saying, ’70 sounds awfully young to me, Arthur.’ And in the Solomon Islands in September 2012 on William and Kate’s visit, William said, ‘I’m never going to let you retire; I’ll put you in a wheelchair and push you to the front and we’ll only look at you!’ So while retirement will happen one day, I haven’t planned anything and I’ve got lots of encouragement to carry on. Please God it continues. Highgrove, I went down there with a big lens to get some pictures from a public footpath on his grounds. He was out riding and came galloping up to me, shouting, ‘What are you doing on my land?’ I replied, ‘It’s not your land, it’s a public footpath, and I’m just doing my job.’ ‘Some job,’ he said. ‘Well, at least I’ve got a job,’ I replied. He turned puce with anger and galloped off. One of the policemen on duty later told me that they were having a coffee break in the kitchen when Prince Charles came storming in, shouting, ‘You’re supposed to be guarding me and Arthur Edwards is on my front lawn!’ I wasn’t there for long afterwards…
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