Over her years as a duchess, we've come to know Kate Middleton for her many talents: piano, various sports (including rugby, of course) and photography, to name a few.
For new exhibition Life Through a Royal Lens at Kensington Palace—AKA her official home base—the Duchess of Cambridge contributed three photos of her children. As such, she had a chat with exhibition staff about her love of photography, and how she got into it.
Luckily for us curious so-and-sos (do I sound like your elementary school teacher yet?), Claudia Acott Williams, curator at Historic Royal Palaces, shared some of that inside knowledge with Express.
"Her grandfather was a very good photographer," Acott Williams said. "When she was a child, he would show her his slides. It was him who taught her how to take photographs."
In turn, the duchess is continuing her grandpa's legacy by photographing her family, and sometimes sharing some of those photos on the Cambridges' official Instagram.
Middleton's interest in photography was sparked from a young age, and she pursued it in different formats, including by writing an entire dissertation as a college student about author Lewis Carroll's photographs of children.
According to Express, she wrote the following to the Lewis Carroll Society at the time: "I am interested in looking at Carroll's representations of 'the child' and whether his photographs support or conflict our notions of childhood."
This gives you quite a bit of insight into how thoughtful the royal must be when taking photos of her own children.
Life Through a Royal Lens, which opened on March 4 and will run through Oct. 30, takes visitors through the history of the Royal Family—from when the medium was first invented up to this day.
Notably, the exhibition features a previously unseen photograph of Princess Diana, taken by David Bailey in 1988. The black and white image has been compared to the recent portraits of her daughter-in-law, Kate Middleton, which were unveiled on the occasion of the duchess' 40th birthday, per Us Weekly.
In a trailer for the exhibit, photographers who have worked with the Queen and other members of the Royal Family gave their thoughts on what that experience is like.
John Rankin Waddell, AKA Rankin, said, "You're looking through the lens at the person that's gonna be looking at that picture, and that's why we have this very intimate relationship with the Queen, and the rest of the Royal Family."
