If you have last Saturday’s edition of The West Australian (19 May 2018), look at the photographs in the special liftout section on the wedding of Prince Harry and Ms. Meghan Markle. In that section is a 10 cm x 7 cm photograph, and it is captioned, “The Changing of the Guard near Windsor Castle.”
At first glance, it looks like a terrible photograph: the guards in the foreground are clearly out of focus, and the buildings in the background are clearly in focus. It looks like a simple case of incorrect focus, whether on the part of the photographer or the part of the camera. The obvious question is: how did such a photograph get published in a newspaper article on one of the key social events of the year?
The image credit was for Getty Images, and I soon found a larger version of the picture. The caption there reads, “A child dressed in ceremonial outfit salutes as the Changing of the Guard passes by near Windsor Castle …” And indeed, at a larger size, a child saluting while dressed in uniform is readily visible as the key subject of the photograph. But printed at 10 cm x 7 cm, it is very difficult to see that child saluting, particularly when the caption in the newspaper does not mention it.
In the publication of this image, the photographer’s vision has been lost—if not wholly, then substantially at the very least. For anyone who’s interested, the photographer was Dan Kitwood, an accomplished staff news photographer at Getty Images.