British Photographer Rankin Reveals How He Tickled the Queen

With a portfolio ranging from portraiture to documentary, British photographer Rankin has shot The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Kate Moss, Kendall Jenner and of course, The Queen to name only a few. He is fearless behind the lens and his imagery has become ingrained in contemporary iconography.

Following her 94th birthday last week, Rankin tells the story of how he made the Queen laugh on camera back in 2002, to get his iconic snap, saying: “A sync lead fell out of camera and she laughed, and all I wanted her to do was laugh, because I knew she had a great sense of humour, and I got the picture”. Reflecting on this and talking about embracing his mistakes, Rankin claims “If a mistake works for you - grab it and run with it.”

On the podcast, Rankin also shared his top five tips for creatives when stuck in lockdown. “My main way of staying focussed is to break my day down into certain things and make sure I’ve got the tasks I have to do for that day. Stop the Instagram scroll - it’s really hard when you’re bombarded with tweets, and you’ve put something up on Instagram and you’re wondering what’s going on with it, but I do think you have to make sure you turn those things off and make sure you don’t just dive into the scroll." Ranking continues his list with seeking out other inspiration: “Make sure you’re not just looking at Instagram posts but that you’re looking at other sources of inspiration. I definitely make sure I do some reading - and reading outside of my category. So I’ll read things that are really philosophical. If you’re reading stuff all the time that questions you and the way you do things, it really helps you.”

Another piece of advice from Rankin is to not read emails in the evenings: “One of the other things I do - and this is a real tip for people, is don’t read emails after 7.30pm, because they can spoil your evening so easily. If I’d read an email last night that I read this morning I’d have probably not slept. Even things like that - having that discipline to turn things off.”

These revelations came to light on a brand new podcast from Fiverr. 9.29 is a series of inspiring creative and business stories from everyone from Ru Paul’s Drag Race’s Divina De Campo, to creative leaders at M&C Saatchi and Vodafone. The podcast acknowledges that people are busy, and so all episodes are 9 minutes and 29 seconds long.