BYWAYS. Photographs by Roger A Deakins

Product Information

This shot was taken of Salisbury Plain (central southern England) at dusk at the end of a scouting day for locations, and the tree is shown at the end of the film 1917. The film, which netted Deakins his second Oscar for Cinematography, is created to look like the whole movie is just one uninterrupted take or shot without any cuts, thanks to the artistry of DP Deakins and director Sam Mendes. The Wind-Blown Tree, Dartmouth, 2015

I can see it’s you,” Deakins recalled Villeneuve saying about the book, meaning that the director recognized the eye behind the images. Do you use the camera to record memories, or is it more of an aesthetic instrument for you, a tool to make art? Deakin first worked in advertising as a copywriter and creative director for Colman Prentis and Varley, while living in Bayswater, London. He was responsible for the National Coal Board slogan "Come home to a real fire". Following this, he taught French and English at Diss Grammar School for three years. [1] [3] Although Deakins has published Byways, a collection of his 50 years of street photography , he has no secret sauce on the subject. In the foreword to his Byways book, Deakins questions, “Whether without a detailed explanation of how and why a picture came about, can it mean the same to the viewer as it does to the photographer?

The Oscar winner behind films for the Coen brothers and Denis Villeneuve has published five decades’ worth of never-before-seen photos. As a cinematographer, Deakins looms large: he is, for many movie peoples’ money, the greatest person doing the job today (witness his 15 Oscar nominations, and two wins). But his reputation as a fine-art photographer is far less developed. Not only is Byways his first monograph, it’s also the first place many of these pictures have ever been shared publicly. I’ve always selected as I’ve gone along over the years. I’ve never really kept a huge number of negatives. I don’t take too many shots. I rarely take a shot unless I’m really confident there’s something there. I’ve been quite selective as I’ve gone along. The Joy of Flight is a very simple photograph,” says the Englishman. “It is easily read, and I think it works as a small image.” [Referring to Magnum Photos using it for their last print sale.] Lightning Strikes, New Mexico, 2014 After I discovered a love for a photographic image, it seemed natural to explore whether documentary filmmaking might be another avenue of exploration,” remembers Deakins. “Only when The National Film and Television School opened up, did I see an opportunity in that direction.”

Shooting a film is so different from capturing a single still frame,” explains the master. “I don’t see why there would be any more or less crossover simply through a change in technology and camera size in particular. Ansel Adams’ still camera was pretty big!” Many images in his photographic oeuvre have harsh lighting, and Deakins also uses it in his cinematography, but it is finely controlled. In his latest film Empire of Light, there is a scene when harsh lighting is required to show a character’s raging paranoia. Today’s small mirrorless cameras can produce high-quality video, but Deakins does not believe this can lead to an increased interest in filmmaking/cinematography by still photographers. You can create an image in any way you want,” he says. “The subject and the framing are more important than the means of capture.” James [his wife] and I really didn’t want to do anything that was about movies. That’s why it was hard to get it published. They wanted that book, they wanted a behind-the-scenes book. This is not that. This is something that was very personal to me — it’s like my sketchbook.Roger was one of those rare people whose character and passion is to be found in everything he made, collected, drew or wrote. His notes, written to himself, provide an insight into a beautiful mind and a sweet man. This archive will capture what it was like to be a passionate, engaged, subversive country intellectual living through a time of profound change. It is very appropriate that Roger's papers will remain within his beloved East Anglia. [2] Work [ edit ] At his exhibition at the Peter Fetterman Gallery in Santa Monica, he says of that print, “I remember when my brother took me to the fairground where I grew up in Torquay; you could go in and join the boxing — they would call for somebody in the audience to come up and attempt to outbox their main guy. There was a bearded lady, there was the sheep with the two heads and strip shows.”

We talked about doing something that is [harsher] without it being unbelievable. We simply thought, ‘Well, she’s been messing with the apartment, so why don’t we just take a shade off her table lamp and use a bare pole?’ When she leans in, getting angry, and she leans towards [fellow theater worker and lover] Stephen, then you get that really harsh light coming up into her face and it almost bleaches her out. It’s just a practical bulb.The celebrated director of photography does shoot color photos on his digital cameras but finds that they become more powerful when he converts them to B&W.