Why Kaminsky’s five films show different light and color

Janusz Kaminsky likes backlighting, smoke, and often uses film noir-style lighting, but when putting his works together, it is difficult to find a consistent Kaminsky style.The Polish-born photographer is the recipient of the 2026《The Hollywood Reporter》Photography Visionary Award.The magazine looks back at five of his films and discusses how he has made lenses, film, color and camera movement follow the story over the past three decades.

The 1993 film Schindler’s List was shot in black and white, but the purpose was not nostalgia.The harsh contrast between light and dark and the sense of immediacy of hand-held photography make the picture close to that of a news documentary, making the audience feel as if they are in the same space as the horrific incident.Kaminsky's use of hard light, thick shadows, and drifting smoke draws on the visual traditions of German Expressionism and postwar European cinema.

In this black and white, the little girl's red coat becomes a color that stings the audience.《 Schindler's List 》 also brought him his first Oscar for photography.

Five years later, "Saving Private Ryan" (Saving Private Ryan), starting from the Omaha Beach landing battle, deliberately shot battlefield images close to the front line.The colors were lightened, giving them a faded metallic look; he removed the lenses' protective coatings to let in the glare, leaving a rougher, less polished texture.The smaller shutter angle makes the explosion and the moment when the bullet hits the object clearer, and also gives the action a sharp and jerky feel.The handheld lens and the smudges splattered on the lens bring the viewing position to the soldier's side.This shooting method influenced the visual expression of the next generation of war films, and Kaminsky won his second Academy Award for Cinematography for this film.

By 2007's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the camera was facing a body that was almost impossible to move.Julian Schnabel adapted Jean-Dominique Bauby's memoirs for the screen, while Kaminsky started from the protagonist's only movable eyelids and let the camera become his eyes.

The opening line of sight is out of focus, the frame is tilted, and is punctuated by blinking eyes. It is suffocatingly narrow; then the field of view gradually opens up.When Bobby's imagination left the ward, the images also expanded. The soft and bright pastels, the sunny memories of Paris and the seaside, allowed him to temporarily escape from the hospital space.This subjective photography experiment brought Kaminsky an Oscar nomination.

In 2011's War Horse, he and Steven Spielberg took the initiative to choose a more gorgeous picture.The two drew on Westerns and epic films by John Ford, David Lean and others: the anamorphic widescreen has warm golden colors, glowing skies, and silhouettes of characters in front of vast landscapes.This story of World War I begins with a fairy tale romance, and then the horror of mud and war gradually approaches.

The rich colors and deliberately reserved classical atmosphere of "War Horse" are suitable for an experience from the perspective of a horse, and also earned Kaminski another Oscar nomination for photography.

When filming Munich in 2005, Kaminsky was looking back at the rough, suspicious films of the 1970s.This work tells the story of the tracking operation after the tragedy of the 1972 Munich Olympics. The images are grainy and slightly faded, and the depressed colors retain an earthy tone; the zoom lens common in thrillers of that era appears repeatedly, making people feel that they are being watched.

These pictures have a clear sense of age, but they don't stop at looking antique.The rough and restrained photography leaves the focus to the moral cost of action.