By Phil Noble

One of the best things about this job is the ability it gives you to photograph things you would never normally get to see in most walks of life. Whether that is pitch-side access to top sporting events, behind the scenes glimpses at royalty and presidents or getting close to wild animals, the opportunities are as varied as they are fascinating. Photographing a young Cheetah cub having a broken ankle repaired definitely falls into those categories.

Me and another news agency colleague had sat down with Chester Zoo’s marketing team a few years ago and discussed the possibility of doing different pictures at the zoo apart from the normal cute baby elephants and giraffes that regularly appear.

We had worked slowly with them to gain the trust of the keepers and zoo management by shooting a variety of behind the scenes jobs like the recent health checks on the tiger cubs.

I was really keen to photograph as many different things as possible at the zoo to give myself and therefore our clients an insight into what goes on. As with most things in life it’s the things that we seldom get to see that are often the most interesting.

The last few days have been frantic to say the least as part of the traveling media circus following William and Kate across Canada.

There are no media charter flights on this particular tour which means that in order to stay apace with the couple’s Canadian airforce jet we are constantly having to decide which events to shoot whilst leaving us enough time to dash to the airport to get our scheduled flights.

This is a nightmare, as you just never know where the picture will happen and you are making decisions based purely on pre-tour briefings and judgment. Fortunately, we are blessed with a hugely talented pool of local photographers in Canada who can still provide coverage at events whilst I race to the airport repacking my kit as I go.

The last few days have been more manic than usual with the couple hopping from the east of the country at Prince Edward Island all the way north to the arctic circle and Yellowknife.

The time zone changes and constant traveling are beginning to take its toll on the traveling pool, but thankfully this has been eased somewhat with two of the best days so far for pictures.

As dawn broke over Westminster Abbey on Friday, myself and the other Reuters photographers were already on our way to our positions for the big day. With no donkey in sight, it already felt like we had done a days work by the time we got there.

Those of us with fixed positions on media gantries could access them from 6am which seems plenty of time for an 11 am start. But with the abbey doors opening from just after 8am and the guests starting to arrive shortly after it didn’t allow for much time for us to set up all the equipment and ensure our various editors around the world could see our pictures.

It wasn’t good for the blood pressure when we discovered the internet connection we had installed outside the abbey for myself, Kai and Toby Melville (who would shoot the key head on picture of the couple leaving as man and wife), had failed overnight and it was a frantic hour or so while replacement parts were sought and installed by our technical team. As with most assignments like this, the on day reality of the event often bears little resemblance to how it appeared in rehearsal or the day earlier.

The guest list was finalized weeks ago and the invitations sent out. For the lucky ones their presence was requested, nobody refused.

There was no fancily decorated envelope from the lord chancellors office landing on our doormat, but an email from the UK chief photographer asking you to be part of the Reuters team to shoot William and Kate’s wedding is an invitation you don’t turn down.

It’s like any other wedding in many respects; you worry about what to wear. How do you keep dry and warm whilst dressing for a wedding? Not as easy task.

And then it comes to where will you sit and who will you sit with; please not annoying Aunty Betty and Uncle Jim, well in this case which position will I get and what will I see?

For myself I was not disappointed, there was no Aunty Betty to worry about, I was given a prime position near the abbey and would be sharing it with my good friend and Reuters Frankfurt photographer Kai Pfaffenbach.

It can’t be very often that I have the same thought as Prince William, or indeed his fiance Kate Middleton. But after today’s visit to Darwen in northern England I’m sure there was at least one point, as the rain bounced off the pavement, that we were all thinking the same thing; I hope the weather is better than this on the 29th!

It was billed as the couples last public engagement before the big day and myself and Reuters colleague Darren Staples had arrived at our separate venues early in the morning to set up and claim our positions.

Security and competition from other photographers means the call time is usually at least a couple of hours before the VIP’s arrival. This is fine when the weather is on your side, but after a gloriously sunny weekend England’s famed April showers chose today to put in an appearance and soaked us to the bone.

When covering football as a photographer you are always prepared for sudden changes in the weather, but protocol dictates that waterproof trousers and hiking boots aren’t usually de rigeur for royal visits and smart attire is neither comfortable or waterproof.

Keeping your cameras dry is the main priority in these situations so with rain covers applied and them tucked under umbrellas for safety the only thing is to tough it out and get wet. The last thing you want to hear from the palace PR team is they are running late, but late they were. It was only 15 minutes but long enough to ensure that by the time they arrived the rain had finally penetrated my gore-tex jacket and the puddles in my shoes were ready to accept fish.

With a month to go before the big day the British media is revving up its engine and increasing the output of wedding related stories. The head chef and household staff at Buckingham house have been filmed preparing food and readying carriages and companies making souvenirs ranging from plates and mugs to beer and sweets have been splashed across the evening news and morning papers.

In a recent interview given by the Prince he admitted to feeling a bit nervous ahead of the big day and even suffered from a mild bout of ‘knee-knocking’ at a recent wedding rehearsal.

Perhaps it was for this reason that his grandmother decided to ‘pop in’ and see how he was settling in to his new job as a search and rescue pilot with the Royal Air Force based on the North Wales island of Anglesey.

The blue skies and bright sunshine evidenced a few weeks earlier when William and his fiancee had named a lifeboat nearby had been replaced by slate grey skies and strong winds for the visit of the Queen to RAF Valley. As the monarch arrived the 40-50 mph gusts nearly gave the Prince his first rescue of the day as she struggled to hold on to her hat.

Prince William and Kate Middleton completed the final leg of their pre-wedding warm up tour of the United Kingdom by flying into Northern Ireland and carrying out a day of engagements in and around Belfast.

Earlier visits to England, Wales and Scotland by the couple meant a trip across the Irish Sea was inevitable before the big day, but the region’s troubled past and heightened security level meant the royal whistle stop tour was unveiled to the press with much less notice than the earlier visits.

Reuters’ Ireland photographer Cathal McNaughton was quickly up and running sorting accreditation and scouting out locations, whilst my soccer match between Blackpool and Chelsea was reassigned and flights and hotels quickly sorted. Within hours I was on my way across the Irish sea.

The security risks meant news of the visit was embargoed until just before the couple’s arrival. In light of this, the huge security operation at the venues was greeted with some bemusement by the locals who knew someone was coming but had know idea who. The crash barrier lined streets, which at the couples previous visits were full of eager well-wishers keen to catch a glimpse of the royal couple, were completely empty in Belfast as the press started to gather at the first venues. Even the guests at the venue I was allocated to had no idea who the dignitary was.

This soon changed as the embargo passed and locals quickly put the crush barriers to use and crowded outside the City Hall and local arts college.

It’s the wedding of the year, well unless you believe all the hype in which case its the wedding of the decade, if not the millennium!

Whatever you believe, the rapidly approaching marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton is going to be huge. The global interest in the British royal family, and the two young princes in particular, is massive, although not quite at the dizzying heights of Diana and Fergie in the 80′s yet. But I’d be willing to wager it will be a close run thing by the end of the year, especially if yesterday was any indication.

Strangely for the world’s most famous engaged couple, photographs of the two of them together are quite scarce. Sure they’ve been snapped by paparazzi over the last few years and there has been the occasional official photograph of the two taken to mark their engagement and at other large Royal gatherings, but aside from that they have remained low key.

Yesterday that changed as the pair stepped out into the limelight on their first real set of engagements since William popped the question.

As soon as the visits were announced a few weeks ago there was a buzz in the air, how many passes would we get, what access would we have, how many shooters do we need, what will she wear!!