The Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle

In May 2018, it may have escaped your notice but Prince Harry and Meghan Markle got married. Now I know that this will come as a shock to some of you but their original plan to have a quiet affair in Rotherham Town Hall was over-ruled so they decided to bodge something together at Windsor Castle instead.

The day itself was, of course, the finish line in a marathon of meetings, photo calls, feature hunts, conference calls, and email chains over the previous months.

Regular trips to barracks across the country took place, to witness various regiments, bands and other collections of military types being put through their paces, ahead of the big day.

Meanwhile, above the streets of London, acres of red, white and blue guided the shoppers and commuters as they made their way through the central London streets.

As the day approached, Windsor's local council made the news, but not in the way that they probably hoped. In an attempt to prepare for thousands of people who would fill the streets with their belongings and sleeping bags, they decided to attempt to move the homeless people, along with their belongings and sleeping bags, by fining them £100 for being wilfully without-home. Illustrating this story, I wanted to avoid just going for the "human zoo" style of photography by taking long lens images of people who are already in a pretty unfortunate state. Thankfully, I found a man who was sleeping outside a bank near the castle walls. Asking his permission, the resulting image hopefully tells the story of the homeless people, the Royal wedding venue and the people walking by.

As W-Day arrived, it was an early start to drive down to Windsor despite having a pre-arranged position to work from, in a bid to beat the predicted traffic jams. Despite the sun still being wrapped up in bed, at 4am the car parks were starting to fill with excited Royalists, eager to bag a prime spot on the route.

With the morning in full swing, Windsor was packed to the rafters with supporters, tourists and media teams, in a constant swirl of poses, interviews, cheers and regal fluff. Royal regular Terry Hutt held a prime spot on the first corner of the route and had a steady stream of international TV crews lining up to hear his words of wisdom.

Finally, after weeks of discussion and hours of waiting, the live pictures showed that the carriage was leaving Windsor castle and was on the way. As is always the way, moments before, my camera had managed to drop two battery bars so a hurried body change later, and I was watching for the first sign of movement.

After all of the build-up, it was over in moments and the happy couple were gone from my viewpoint, above the masses, in a temporarily-rented office window. Working on these kind of assignments is a lesson in teamwork, as the story will be told through the complete set, not from one photographer's position alone. I'd warned the on-site editor who I was working with to expect the sense of deflation that would come, so we could both laugh at the "Was that it?" feeling we both now felt as we packed up and headed out into the chaos. Oh, Royal weddings...