my favorite cinematogrophers

One of the highest appraised contemporary cinematographers. He was born in Spain but moved to Cuba by age 18 to join his exiled anti-Franco father. In Havana, he founded a cineclub and wrote film reviews. Then, he went on to study in Rome at the Centro Sperimentale. He directed six shorts in Cuba and two in New York. After the 1959 Cuban revolution, he returned and made several documentaries for the Castro-regime. But after two of his shorts (Gente en la playa (1960) and La Tumba Francesca) had been banned, he moved to Paris. There he became the favourite cameraman of Éric Rohmer and François Truffaut. In 1978, he started his impressive Hollywood-career. In his later years, he co-directed two documentaries about the human rights situation in Cuba: Improper Conduct (1984) (about the persecution of gay people) and Nadie escuchaba (1987). He shot several prestigious commercials for Giorgio Armani and Calvin Klein. Nestor Almendros died of cancer.

Andrew Lau Wai-Keung was born in Hong Kong in 1960, and has been fond of photography as a child. He joined Shaw Brothers (HK) Ltd. after secondary school graduation. The first film he participated in as a semi-skilled worker in cinematography was Legendary Weapons of China directed by Chia-Liang Liu.

His position rose throughout the years with film such as City on Fire, Where's Officer Tuba?, As Tears Go By, Curry and Pepper, Lee Rock and Lee Rock II. His work as a cinematographer has also garnered him several nominations at the Hong Kong Film Awards. Lau had later gotten recognition for his loose style in capturing natural light and dynamic camera movements.

His directorial debut arrived in 1990 with Against All, but he didn't give up his career as a cinematographer. He also co-directed the films To Live and Die in Tsimshatsui and Modern Romance, alongside director Jing Wong. In 1995, he took up the position of director and cinematographer once again for the films Love of the Last Emperor and The Mean Street Story.

Lau founded B.O.B. & Partners Co. Ltd. jointly with Manfred Wong and Jing Wong. The first film of this company was Young and Dangerous which was released in 1996 and became a box office hit. In the same year, the 'B.O.B. trio' produced the film's first two sequels.

From 1996 to 1998, he continued to direct films including the Young and Dangerous Saga--and "The Storm Riders." Having been involved in the Young and Dangerous films including its four sequels, Lau finished his involvement with the franchise with "Young and Dangerous: The Prequel" in 1998, and "Born to Be King" in 2000.

Lau has also made a name for himself for combining martial arts with computer-animated special effects on the movie screen in such acclaimed films as The Storm Riders and A Man Called Hero. Other films such as Sausalito and Dance of a Dream have lightened Andrew's film career.

In 2002, Lau established Basic Pictures, a company that started out with the blockbuster movie Infernal Affairs, in which he co-directed alongside co-writer Alan Mak (Alan Mak). It would be the first of many collaborations involving the directing duo.

The film starred the four top actors of its year--Andy Lau, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Eric Tsang and Anthony Chau-Sang Wong-- along with the year's two top actresses--Kelly Chen and Sammi Cheng.

Infernal Affairs was the number one box-office hit in Hong Kong that year, breaking several box office records alone. Furthermore, the film won many Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Picture, Best Directors (Lau and Mak), Best Screenplay (Mak and co-writer Chong), and Best Supporting Actor (Wong). Infernal Affairs also went on win awards at the 40th Golden Horse Awards and the Golden Bauhinia Awards.

Not only was the film successful worldwide, but it later became the inspiration for Martin Scorsese's 2006 film, The Departed (2006).

In 2003, Lau and Mak had completed the trilogy with the prequel Infernal Affairs II, and the sequel/prequel Infernal Affairs III. Later that year, the directing duo won the "Leaders of the Year 2003" Award in the Sports/Culture/Entertainment Category.

In 2004, Lau and Mak worked on another blockbuster, Initial D, which was shot in Japan and released in Hong Kong during the summer. Once again, it was also another successful film for Lau and Mak, winning multiple awards at the Hong Kong Film Awards, winning for Best New Performer (Jay Chou), Best Supporting Actor (Anthony Chau-Sang Wong), and Best Visual Effects.

In 2006, Lau, Mak and scriptwriter Felix Chong re-teamed to make the 2005 film, Moonlight in Tokyo. They re-teamed again for the 2006 film Confessions of Pain, once again re-teaming with Infernal Affairs star Tony Leung Chiu-wai.

With his difference in style and aspiration, Andrew Lau, as a prolific director/cinematographer continues to make good quality films that will appeal to a mass audience.

Gordon Willis was an American cinematographer. He's best known for his work on Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather films, as well asWoody Allen's Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979).

His work on the first two Godfather films turned out to be groundbreaking in its use of low-light photography and underexposed film, as well as in his control of lighting and exposure to create the sepia tones that denoted period scenes in The Godfather Part II (1974).

In the seven-year period up to 1977, Willis was the director of photography on six films that received among them 39 Academy Award nominations, winning 19 times, including three awards for Best Picture. During this time he did not receive a single nomination for Best Cinematography.

He directed one film of his own, Windows (1980). His last film as a cinematographer was The Devil's Own (1997), directed by Alan J. Pakula.

Willis died of cancer on May 18, 2014, ten days before his 83rd birthday, at the age of 82.

Goeffrey Unsworth was one of the great cinematographers of the 20th Century, the winner of two Oscars, five BAFTA awards, and three awards from the British Society of Cinematographers for his work as a director of photography. Born in 1914 in Lancashire, England, Unsworth started in the industry in 1932 at Gaumont-British before joining Technicolor in 1937. He worked as a camera assistant and operator on a many of the most important color movies made in England.

In contrast to the Technicolor aesthetic, when Unsworth became a director of photography (starting in 1946 with the musical The Laughing Lady (1946), he used a somber palette. Moving to Rank at Pinewood Studios, he shot adventure films, comedies, and thrillers in black and white.

His breakthrough into the top ranks of cinematographers was Becket (1964) in 1964, for which he received his first Academy Award nomination. He did not get Oscar-nominated for his spectacular work on 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) because Stanley Kubrick generally was given credit for the visual style of the film, but his ability to integrate cinematography and special effects was put to great effect with Superman (1978) (1978). He was in demand for period pieces, winning his first Oscar for Bob Fosse's Cabaret (1972) and his second Oscar posthumously for shooting Roman Polanski's Tess (1979).

Geoffrey Unsworth died in Brittany on the set of "Tess" after suffering a heart attack. He was 64 years old.

Hang-Sang Poon is known for Who Am I? (1998), Kung Fu Hustle (2004) and Ip Man 2 (2010).

Larkin Seiple is known for Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019) and Weapons (2025).

Michael Ballhaus was a German cinematographer. He worked on many American films, including Baby It's You (1983), Old Enough (1984), After Hours (1985), The Color of Money (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Goodfellas (1990), Dracula (1992), The Age of Innocence (1993), Gangs of New York (2002), and The Departed (2006).

Ballhaus was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, for Broadcast News (1987), The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), and Gangs of New York (2002), but never won.

His son Florian Ballhaus is also a cinematographer who worked on Flightplan (2005) and The Devil Wears Prada (2006).

Ballhaus died on 11 April 2017, at the age of 81.

Stanley Cortez was born Samuel Krantz in New York City, New York, the son of Sarah (Lefkowitz) and Moses/Morris Krantz, Austrian Jewish immigrants. His famous actor brother, born Jacob Krantz, changed his name to Ricardo Cortez in order to acquire a more suitably romantic Hollywood image. Stanley changed his name accordingly. After studies at New York University he embarked on a photographic career, first as assistant to noted portrait photographers Streichan and Bachrach (he designed many of their lavish background sets), then as camera assistant for Pathé Revue and for various Manhattan-based film companies. Grabbing the chance to join Gloria Swanson Productions, Stanley then spent a lengthy apprenticeship in the 1920s and early 1930s learning the intricacies of his craft from such established Hollywood cinematographers as Lee Garmes and Hal Mohr. After moving from studio to studio, either as a camera assistant or shooting screen tests, he was signed to a seven-year contract by Universal in 1936, albeit consigned to its "B" unit. His first film as full director of photography was Four Days Wonder (1936). During World War II, he was assigned to the Army Pictorial Service of the Signals Corps.

Much of his subsequent career was spent on fairly routine and undistinguished second features and it was not until he started working for charismatic filmmakers like Orson Welles and David O. Selznick that he was able to fully develop some of his experimental techniques. One of his low-budget outings, a gothic old-dark-house horror/comedy entitled The Black Cat (1941), rather impressed the genial Mr. Welles who promptly hired him for The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). This was the first of two Cortez films generally regarded as visual masterpieces, with beautiful lighting effects, clever angles and lingering close-ups. Of particular note are the staircase scene and the famous long shot -- via hand-held camera -- of the abandoned mansion. Despite critical plaudits, "Ambersons" was a financial disaster for RKO (it cost $1,1 million and lost $624,000 at the box office) and Cortez was partly blamed for costly delays and extravagant scenes, some 40-50 minutes of which were cut by direct orders from studio boss George Schaefer without consulting either Welles or Cortez. The latter ended up being indirectly censured by receiving lesser assignments. What remained of "Ambersons" has become more appreciated as a sublime visual experience with the passing of time.

The second outstanding Cortez contribution was the chillingly dark, haunting thriller The Night of the Hunter (1955)--a brilliant allegory of good versus evil masterminded by Charles Laughton in his sole directorial effort. Cortez's lighting and use of irises are reminiscent of German expressionist cinema, or, at least, the work of Karl Struss and Charles Rosher on Sunrise (1927). Among many indelible images are the flowing hair of drowned Shelley Winters in the underwater current and the lights flickering across the water in what is an almost surreal nightly landscape.

A third Cortez effort deserving of mention is the superior psychological drama The Three Faces of Eve (1957), his differential lighting for the face of schizophrenic Eve White (Joanne Woodward) effectively contrasting the multiple personalities within her psyche. Sadly, by the end of the decade Cortez's career went into a decline. It continued that way through the 1960s, the quality of his assignments fluctuating wildly between the occasional "A" picture (The Bridge at Remagen (1969)) and Z-grade turkeys like The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966) and The Navy vs. the Night Monsters (1966).

Distinguished veteran cinematographer John F. Seitz had eighteen patents for various photographic processes to his name. These included illuminating devices, processes for making dissolves and the matte shot, which he perfected during filming of Rex Ingram's Trifling Women (1922). Seitz started with Essanay in Chicago, then joined the St. Louis Motion Picture Company as a lab tech in 1909. Within another four years, he had progressed to director of photography. He was signed by Metro in 1920, doing his best work in collaboration with Ingram, most notably on The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) and The Prisoner of Zenda (1922). Personally selected by William Randolph Hearst, Seitz was also behind the camera for The Patsy (1928), one of the major hits for Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies. By this time, he was the highest paid cinematographer in Hollywood.

Seitz's trademark was low key lighting and differentially illuminating different regions of the screen (ie. background, foreground and middle). His colour photography was characterised by a tendency to favor tan or beige as backgound colours, and vivid colours for costumes or props. Seitz's career in the 1930's, spent at 20th Century Fox (1931-36) and MGM (1937-40), was generally unremarkable. However, he enjoyed a massive resurgence at Paramount (1941-52), working on some of the best films made by Preston Sturges (Sullivan's Travels (1941), Hail the Conquering Hero (1944) and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1943)) and Billy Wilder (Double Indemnity (1944), The Lost Weekend (1945) and Sunset Boulevard (1950)). Add to that another two excellent films noir, This Gun for Hire (1942) and Lucky Jordan (1942) - both directed by Frank Tuttle and starring Alan Ladd. He was a master at creating atmosphere through ominous shadows and looming close-ups.

Andrzej Sekula was born in Wroclaw, Dolnoslaskie, Poland. He is a cinematographer and director, known for Pulp Fiction (1994), American Psycho (2000) and Reservoir Dogs (1992).

Roger Deakins is an English cinematographer best known for his work on the films of the Coen brothers, Sam Mendes, and Denis Villeneuve.

He is a member of both the American and British Society of Cinematographers.

Deakins' first feature film in America as cinematographer was Mountains of the Moon (1990). He began his collaboration with the Coen brothers in 1991 on the film Barton Fink. He received his first major award from the American Society of Cinematographers for his outstanding achievement in cinematography for the internationally praised major motion picture The Shawshank Redemption (1994).

He is also known for his work in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), No Country for Old Men (2007), True Grit (2010), Skyfall (2012), Sicario (2015), and Blade Runner 2049 (2017).

Deakins also worked as one of the visual consultants for Pixar's animated feature WALL-E.

In 2018 he won an Oscar for best cinematographer for his work in Blade Runner 2049.

Barry Sonnenfeld was born and raised in New York City. He graduated from New York University Film School in 1978. He started work as director of photography on the Oscar-nominated In Our Water (1982). Then Joel Coen and Ethan Coen hired him for Blood Simple (1984). This film began his collaboration with the Coen Bros., who used him for their next two pictures, Raising Arizona (1987) and Miller's Crossing (1990). He also worked with Danny DeVito on his Throw Momma from the Train (1987) and Rob Reiner on When Harry Met Sally... (1989) and Misery (1990). Sonnenfeld got his first work as a director from Orion Pictures on The Addams Family (1991), a box-office success released in November 1991 followed by its sequel, Addams Family Values (1993). He received critical acclaim for his fourth directorial effort, Get Shorty (1995). Produced by Jersey Films and based on a novel by Elmore Leonard, the film won a Golden Globe for best male performance. In 1996 Steven Spielberg asked him to direct Men in Black (1997). Starring Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith, the movie was a critical and financial smash. Producer Jon Peters then asked Sonnenfeld to direct Wild Wild West (1999), an adaptation of an old TV series. He also directed the comedy Big Trouble (2002), after which he made his most successful film sequel, Men in Black II (2002).

Steven Andrew Soderbergh was born on January 14, 1963 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, the second of six children of Mary Ann (Bernard) and Peter Soderbergh. His father was of Swedish and Irish descent, and his mother was of Italian ancestry. While he was still at a very young age, his family moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where his father was a professor and the dean of the College of Education at Louisiana State University. While still in high school, around the age of 15, Soderbergh enrolled in the university's film animation class and began making short 16-millimeter films with second-hand equipment, one of which was the short film "Janitor". After graduating high school, he went to Hollywood, where he worked as a freelance editor. His time there was brief and, shortly after, he returned home and continued making short films and writing scripts.

His first major break was in 1986 when the rock group Yes assigned him to shoot a full-length concert film for the band, which eventually earned him a Grammy nomination for the video, Yes: 9012 Live (1985). Following this achievement, Soderbergh filmed Winston (1987), the short-subject film that he would later expand into Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), a film that earned him the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or Award, the Independent Spirit Award for Best Director, and an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Over the next six years, he was married to actress Betsy Brantley and had a daughter named Sarah Soderbergh, who was born in 1990.

Also during this time, he made such films as Kafka (1991), King of the Hill (1993), The Underneath (1995) and Gray's Anatomy (1996), which many believed to be disappointments. In 1998, Soderbergh made Out of Sight (1998), his most critically and commercially successful film since Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989). Then, in 2000, Soderbergh directed two major motion pictures that are now his most successful films to date: Erin Brockovich (2000) and Traffic (2000). These films were both nominated for Best Picture Oscars at the 2001 Academy Awards and gave him the first twin director Oscar nomination in almost 60 years and the first ever win. He won the Oscar for Best Director for Traffic (2000) at the 2001 Oscars.

Tonino Delli Colli was born on 20 November 1922 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was a cinematographer and actor, known for The Name of the Rose (1986), Life Is Beautiful (1997) and Bitter Moon (1992). He was married to Alexandra Delli Colli. He died on 16 August 2005 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.

Stephen H. Burum was born on 25 November 1939 in Visalia, California, USA. He is a cinematographer, known for The Untouchables (1987), The War of the Roses (1989) and Mission: Impossible (1996).

Multiple award-winning cinematographer Dean Cundey, ASC, CSC who was nominated for an Oscar for "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and took home the BAFTA for the same film, has a career spanning decades with awards and nominations including a Primetime Emmy (2023 "The Mandalorian") a Daytime Emmy (2001 "The Face: Jesus in Art"), a Chicago Film Critics Association award ("Apollo 13"), to American Society of Cinematographers awards ("Apollo 13," "Hook"). His prolific career also includes a Lifetime Achievement Award from the ASC and a President's Award from the SOC, and he's still not done shooting. Born in Alhambra, California, Cundey spent his childhood building miniature sets and reading "American Cinematographer." Following graduation from UCLA film school, where he was taught by James Wong Howe, ASC, Cundey's first job on set was as a makeup artist on Roger Corman's "Gas!" or "It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It." Cundey's first assignment as a director of photography was on the revenge film "The No Mercy Man." He continued with other horror and exploitation movies, then began a collaboration with director John Carpenter on five films for which he received accolades: "Halloween," "The Fog," "Escape from New York," "The Thing" and "Big Trouble in Little China." Cundey transitioned into a collaboration with Robert Zemeckis on impressive features such as "Romancing the Stone," all three "Back to the Future" films, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and "Death Becomes Her." Not content to settle for that, he also dabbled in directing with his debut on "Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves" and was also the second-unit director on "Deep Rising" and "Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties." .

Matthew Libatique is an American cinematographer. He is best known for his work with director Darren Aronofsky on the films Pi (1998), Requiem for a Dream (2000), The Fountain (2006), Black Swan (2010), Noah (2014) and Mother! (2017). He also shot Bradley Cooper's directorial debut film, A Star Is Born (2018).

Libatique also work as an cinematographer in the films Tigerland (2000), Phone Booth (2002), Iron Man (2008), Iron Man 2 (2010) and Venom (2018).

He has received two Academy Awards nominations for Best Achievement in Cinematography, one for Black Swan and the other for A Star Is Born.

Lubezki began his career in Mexican film and television productions in the late 1980s. His first international production was the 1993 independent film Twenty Bucks (1993), which followed the journey of a single twenty-dollar bill.

Lubezki is a frequent collaborator with fellow Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón. The two have been friends since they were teenagers and attended the same film school at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Together they have worked on six motion pictures: Love in the Time of Hysteria (1991), A Little Princess (1995), Great Expectations (1998), Y tu mamá también (2001), Children of Men (2006), and Gravity (2013). His work with Cuarón on Children of Men (2006), has received universal acclaim. The film utilized a number of new technologies and distinctive techniques. The "roadside ambush" scene was shot in one extended take utilizing a special camera rig invented by Doggicam systems, developed from the company's Power Slide system. For the scene, a vehicle was modified to enable seats to tilt and lower actors out of the way of the camera. The windshield of the car was designed to tilt out of the way to allow camera movement in and out through the front windscreen. A crew of four, including Lubezki, rode on the roof. Children of Men (2006) also features a seven-and-a-half-minute battle sequence composed of roughly five seamless edits.

Lubezki has been nominated for eight Academy Awards for Best Cinematography, winning three, for Gravity (2013), Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014), and The Revenant (2015). He is the first cinematographer in history to win three consecutive Academy Awards.

Dante Spinotti was born in Tolmezzo, Udine, in the northeastern Italian Region of Friuli. He began his career at RAI (Italian TV), before that he spent lot of time in Kenia as cinematographer for his uncle. In 1985, producer Dino De Laurentiis offered him a chance to work in USA for the first time with Michael Mann for the feature Manhunter (1986). From that experience, Spinotti became one of the most appreciated cinematographer in Hollywood. His particular vision gives a movie a great sense of reality. Among his works are: The Last of the Mohicans (1992) (Academy Nomination), Heat (1995), L.A. Confidential (1997) (Academy Nomination), The Insider (1999) (Academy Nomination), and Wonder Boys (2000). He married his wife Marcella, and they live in Los Angeles, Rome, and Tolmezzo.

Christopher Doyle was born on 2 May 1952 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He is a cinematographer and actor, known for Paranoid Park (2007), Hero (2002) and 2046 (2004).