Every shot I have ever made has been a compromise in some way. No image has ever been as good as the one I envisioned in my mind's eye.

I am concerned that the subtlety is being lost and every film tends to look very contrasty and saturated.

When you move the camera, or you do a shot like the crane down (in Shawshank) with them standing on the edge of the roof, then it's got to mean something. You've got to know why you're doing it; it's got to be for a reason within the story, and to further the story.

Someone said to me, early on in film school... if you can photograph the human face you can photograph anything, because that is the most difficult and most interesting thing to photograph.

Maybe that sounds a bit pretentious, but I think life experience is always more important than technical knowledge.

I don't really believe in the mystery of cinematography - what happens in the camera is what the cinematographers create and all that nonsense.

I thought that was a pretty stupid argument, really, because it's the final product that matters. The look of the film, however it's done, is still the cinematographer's vision in my mind. People said the same when color film came in, didn't they? The world evolves, and image-making evolves.