How Reuters Captured 'Haunted' Photo of Ex-Prince

Phil Noble almost missed the shot that would race around the world. The Reuters photographer drove six hours from Manchester to Norfolk on Thursday after word spread that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor had been arrested in the county over allegations he passed confidential government papers to Jeffrey Epstein. With no official confirmation of where he was being held, and more than 20 police stations to choose from, Noble went to the small market town of Aylsham after receiving a tip.

For around seven hours, almost nothing happened. Noble and Reuters video journalist Marissa Davison waited outside as darkness set in. Convinced they were wasting time, they finally decided to get a hotel. Noble was driving away when Davison called: the royal's vehicles had just pulled in. He swung back to the station as two cars sped out. The first clearly carried police, so Noble aimed at the second, firing off six frames in seconds. Four were useless, one was blurred, but the sixth became the defining image: Mountbatten-Windsor slumped in the back of a Range Rover, looking ahead as he left police custody after a day of questioning. The former prince had been in custody for almost 12 hours.

The photo was on the front page of newspapers in the UK and worldwide Friday morning. Royal commentator Sarah Hewson described his appearance as "haunted. "It is a photo that will go down in history and is a photo that will haunt him for the rest of his life," she said, per Yahoo News Australia. Experts say a photo like Noble's, captured through glass with no time to prepare, is one of the hardest shots in news photography.

• "You can plan and use your experience and know roughly what you need to do, but still everything needs to align," Noble says. "When you're doing car shots it's more luck than judgment." Thursday, he says, "was a proper old school news day, a guy being arrested, who can we call, tracking him down."
• Noble, who was capturing photos of floods and soccer games, was among the photographers outside the Sandringham Estate on Friday, the BBC reports. Mountbatten-Windsor returned to the royal estate after his release. He remains under investigation and police continued to search the Royal Lodge, his former residence, on Friday, the AP reports.