SHARP FOCUS
W henever we talk about movies, and in particular the really good ones, what we’re really talking about is cinematography. This is the art of the camera: the way light is used to illuminate or obscure, the tones and the colours, the textural graininess of film or the sharpness of digital, how close or how far the lens sits from an actor’s face, the how and the why we see what we see on-screen. And capturing it all is the cinematographer, or director of photography.
“The cinematographer helps to translate the director’s vision into photographic imagery,” says Rachel Morrison of her craft. “My favourite thing about my work is that no two days are the same, no two shots are the same, and no two stories are the same,” she adds. She has helmed projects as varied as and , for which she was nominated for an Oscar in 2018: the first female cinematographer to be acknowledged at the Academy Awards. “I was overwhelmed at the time,” Morrison admits. “I was actually three months pregnant and was released the same month,
