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As any parent of three youngsters will attest, getting everyone to smile and face the camera for a photograph is no easy task. Therefore, even without having to resort to expert photo analysis like the A.P. and other outlets did, I was able to determine that the photo Catherine posted for British Mother's Day had been manipulated — due to the bombshell tell-tale giveaway that all three children were smiling happily and facing the direction of the camera during the exact moment the photo was taken.
I have three children roughly the same age as those of Princess Catherine and Prince William, and I can count the number of times we've had a family picture of this smile-to-facing-camera ratio on one hand. Granted, I have three rambunctious boys, but the laws of juvenile photo taking etiquette transcend gender, social class, and/or royalty rank.
Unless Prince William is behind the camera with a substantial monetary and candy-filled bribe in hand ready to dole out the second after he presses “click” to snap the pic, there is no way this image hasn't been digitally altered.
The odds of having three smiles and three forward facing children in the same picture is astronomically low — there isn't a shred of hair-pulling, face-making, off-camera glancing, sibling teasing, tear shedding or parent yelling present anywhere in the image.
Also the children all appear to be willingly wearing nice clothes that are completely devoid of ketchup or chocolate stains, so there was some obvious touch-up work here as well.
Many news outlets have already noted the manipulations of the photo. Now, for the first time, I can reveal with higher-than-average certainty the reasons for these alterations.
For example, the New York Times noted that daughter Charlotte's hair appeared to have an “artificial pattern”. This is undoubtedly due to something like Prince George spitting out gum that landed in his sister's hair as he was saying “cheese”.
The Times also notes that Catherine's jacket “zipper and hair are misaligned” in the photo. Well of course they are, because Prince Louis was most likely making the zipper go “up-and-down-up-and-down-up-and-down!” ad nauseam until a bit of Catherine's hair got stuck in the zipper and had to be cut out. Or, you know, something like that.
It's also been observed that a “portion of sleeve is missing” from Charlotte's red sweater. Well that's what happens when instead of washing off the frosting stain in the bathroom like your mom asked, you instead feed it to the family dogs and they take a bite of your sleeve instead.
Finally, another source of debate has been the observation that on the ground in the picture, “edges of tiles appear repeated”. This is surely due to the fact that Prince Louis brought his lego spaceship to the photo shoot for some inexplicable kid-logic reason and then left it on the floor, only to have dad William step on it on his way over to take the photo, unleashing a string of expletives that made everyone laugh, even mom Catherine — and on Mother's Day no less! So hey, I stand corrected, maybe the smiles in the photo are real after all!
