Lighting and Focus

“Painting with light” is one of the more obvious talents that a cinematographer (or a “lighting cameraman,” as he or she is called in the United Kingdom) brings to the job. However, that phrase is very misleading, since there are many facets to that task, including color, size, shape, texture, and focus.

Philip Kemp talks about John Alton, a popular cinematographer who shot many of the film noir movies of the 1940s, in a biography of Alton on the site filmreference.com: