We capture every moment yet lose that special shot Then my mother bought a small Kodak that took colour snaps. After that, everything's a blur - albeit a blur with jolly Kodak fuzz. Even though my little sister arrived too late for a studio photograph, there are more pics of her than we older four put together. She was snapped in my mother's arms, snoozing on my father's chest, being passed like a parcel between us. My older brother set up a dark room in a shed and caught her every smile and pout. He also shot a 32-frame reel of film of me aged 11, having a stupendous tantrum, that causes mirth to this day. So I can't help welcoming Michael Middleton's charming - if slightly off-focus - pictures of his daughter, son-in-law and baby George. Who cares if he's shot into the sun and made William's pate blur into the skyline? I enjoy the back-lit halo that makes Kate look like a Renaissance Madonna, and love the way she's beaming as only a daughter can for her father. Thank heavens there's no "relaxed" diamond necklace or cufflinks, both on prominent display in the photograph of the newborn William. Of course, there's no less PR value in the Middleton snap than there was in the old formal portraits. This is a Facebook photo for the social media generation; it says, "We royals are just like you." Like all good propaganda, the message is irresistible. With every gain, however, there's a loss. For all the glorious candour of our Snappy Snaps age, I mourn the end of mystery and glamour. My parents and grandparents were immortalised in a tiny handful of carefully posed images showing them to best advantage: my grandfather smoking his pipe in uniform and looking just like Alec Guinness in The Bridge on the River Kwai, or my mother in her 21st-birthday gown, leaning against a wall in echo of a Fifties starlet. This kind of picture looks silly now, when set against the constant reportage of our smartphone lives. Few hire professional photographers except for weddings, and even then, those most in demand create an air of spontaneity. At mine, I had my sister and three friends taking informal photos; as a consequence of that, there are no snaps of my older brother or ushers. Saddest of all, few modern children will know the magic of a contact sheet that shows a face caught in an arc of changing expression. Nor the particular satisfaction of ringing the perfect portrait: the one that captures the emotion forever.