BYWAYS. Photographs by Roger A Deakins

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I confess to feeling something like jealousy reading the record of Deakin’s wonderful, friend-filled existence, at once liberated and rooted. A boomer, he grew up in a postwar era of optimism and economic prosperity, a working-class scholarship boy at Haberdashers’ Aske’s (“we knew how to use the apostrophe”) who went on to a dreamlike Cambridge of punting and Pimm’s. He became a successful advertising executive, was pursued by any number of girls, then found a ruined farmhouse in Suffolk to which, aged 31, he retired. He then teaches, swims, gets involved in the local “faires”, which are like mini East Anglian Glastonburys, befriends Richard Branson and Andrea Arnold, Richard Mabey and Robert Macfarlane. He’s a terrible poet but a beautiful writer of prose, and records his life as if he knows that a book like this will one day be written about it. I was going to ask you about your relationship to painting. I know that you’ve always had a love of the medium. Does it influence your work behind the lens? 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] 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. 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

It may sound strange, but I consider my film and my photography work to be completely independent from each other. Certain preferences in composition probably exist across both, but I don’t feel they feed into each other. They’re quite separate disciplines. I’m much more influenced by photographers and painters than film-makers. I study the work of other cinematographers, of course, but there’s something unique about a still image that speaks to me more than any other visual language. The Oscar winner behind films for the Coen brothers and Denis Villeneuve has published five decades’ worth of never-before-seen photos.I simply use a still camera to record an image of a location or a set so that I can then use it as a reference,” he says. “These photos … are only spacial references [and not to examine the lighting].” I used to hitchhike to various locations and spend the day with my camera,” recounts the cinematographer of the twenty-third Bond film, Skyfall.“Sometimes, I even slept on the beach to catch the early light. He is survived by his partner Alison Hastie and his son. [1] His archive has been given to the University of East Anglia, including writings on ancient trees, along with film banks, photographs, journals and Deakin's swimming trunks. [2] The nature writer Robert Macfarlane was Deakin's literary executor. He commented: Known for his work with filmmakers like the Coen Brothers and Denis Villeneuve, Deakins has over eighty cinematography credits to his name, and has been inducted into both the American and British Society of Cinematographers. He has been nominated for Academy Awards a whopping fifteen times and won twice, garnering accolades for Best Cinematography for Blade Runner 2049 and 1917. Obviously, there are things that you learn in one that help you in the other, technically speaking. But I do think capturing a still photograph is very different.

Roger Deakins got his start as a director of photography in 1977 on the pulpy British drama Cruel Passion. He's since gone on to collaborate with John Sayles, David Mamet, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Sam Mendes, Denis Villeneuve, and possibly most famously, Joel and Ethan Coen. Roger Deakins helped shoot over half of the Coen Brothers filmography so far, including Fargo and O Brother, Where Art Thou and No Country for Old Men. a b c d e "Archives of environmentalist Roger Deakin given to university". Guardian. 8 May 2010 . Retrieved 19 September 2012.

The Beginnings in England

I can see it’s you,” Deakins recalled Villeneuve saying about the book, meaning that the director recognized the eye behind the images. It’s just me and my camera. I’m not under stress, under pressure of a schedule or anything,” says two-time Oscar winner and 15-time nominee Roger Deakins.