Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP
NEW YORK
The first photograph Roger Deakins ever took, in 1969 Bournemouth, England, shows a man and a woman quietly eating lunch on a bench outside a ladies room. A sign reads: “Keep it to yourself.”
Deakins has taken countless images since that first snap. He’s photographed “Fargo,” “Kundun” and “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.” He’s shot “No Country for Old Men,” “The Man Who Wasn’t There” and “Skyfall.” He’s been nominated for 15 Oscars and won two. He’s been knighted.
But if given the chance, he’d take that first black-and-white shot exactly the same way.
“I would take the same photograph now with the same situation, the same frame, the same lens,” Deakins says, chuckling. “I don’t think my eye has changed much at all.”
For decades, Deakins’ eye has been one of the keenest in movies. It’s not easy to pinpoint what makes a film’s cinematography identifiably Deakins’ work and yet it’s obvious. Something about how seamlessly the images connect. A sometimes wry perspective. “I try to find a bit of humor,” he said in a recent interview from outside London.
Deakins’ latest is Sam Mendes’ “Empire of Light,” starring Olivia Colman and Michael Ward as workers at a 1980s shoreline cinema in the south of England. The film, currently in theaters, returns…