The Princess of Wales was pictured for the first time since announcing her cancer diagnosis in a stunning photograph taken by Matt Porteous in June 2024. The photographer has become a favourite of the royals, regularly taking images of Prince and Princess and their children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis. In this feature, published in Tatler’s July 2023 issue, Tatler’s Harriet Kean spoke to Porteous about his work, swimming with sharks and his relationship with the couple.
Deep underwater in the Caribbean Sea, a nurse shark is gliding over a coral reef. It’s being watched by two divers drifting nearby: he’s tall, athletic, slightly balding, and she has chestnut-coloured, Rapunzel-like hair. They could be anyone, but actually, these explorers have blood as blue as the ocean. They are the future king and queen of England; the current Prince and Princess of Wales. But here, suspended in the sea, they’ve swapped regalia and tiaras for wetsuits and oxygen tanks.
Yes, dear reader, this really happened. Last year, Prince William and Kate went diving with sharks in Belize. It might have been one of the most modern and surprising royal moments in recent history. Accompanying them on this adventure was a man: long-haired, rugged-looking, camera in hand. His name? Matt Porteous, an ocean and wildlife photographer from Jersey whose ‘side hustle’ has been capturing the Wales family for seven years.
Perhaps his story has come full circle. It all started on the surf in his teens, when he first got hold of a waterproof camera and began photographing the crashing waves on the beaches of Jersey.
‘I started capturing what I saw while I was surfing,’ he says. ‘[As a child] I felt that I wasn’t good at expressing myself. I didn’t have a lot of things to say to people. I used photography as a way to express how I saw the world. I was always the one with the camera, taking pictures of my friends and my life. I saw things a bit differently.’ And now, his world has expanded. As well as being
an award-winning ocean photographer, he is a sought-after photographer of society weddings (just ask the Marquess and Marchioness of Blandford, or Ellie Goulding and Casper Jopling.)
Porteous might be a modern-day Lord Snowdon, whose portfolio of royal, society and documentary photography made him so renowned. ‘I’ve never heard that before,’ Porteous laughs. ‘That’s so funny. I’m really not.’ He is simply adamant he’s ‘telling positive stories’, whether he’s shooting the Waleses at home, making a film about protecting sharks or telling the story of French fishermen invading the shores of Jersey. ‘I’m just telling the story of how I see it,’ he concludes. And that vision is expansive: he flits from the beaches of the Bahamas to the shores of Belize, to a fishing town in the Maldives and then to Bali (where he is currently ‘connecting with ocean content creators and hanging out with surfers’). He’s sometimes joined on his travels by his ‘soulmate’ and muse, Mandy Huelin. Together, they’ve road-tripped through Africa, documented fishermen in India and climbed Morocco’s Atlas Mountains.
