John Seale

Often associated with the work of Peter Weir, both as a camera operator and director of photography, John Seale first earned his reputation as one of Australia's leading cinematographers before garnering international attention as one of the world's best directors of photography. His reputation is based on his striking feel for textures and colors of nature, as evidenced by such films as Peter Weir's "Witness" (1985), for which he was nominated for the Best Cinematography Academy Award and Anthony Minghella's "The English Patient" (1996), which earned him the Oscar. The former possessed striking contrasts between the big city of Philadelphia and the fields of the Amish Country, yet each created a full-bodied environment. For the latter, Seale had to accomplish the photography on three levels: the desert in which Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas have their romance, the war-torn zone of Italy, which required darker, bluer lighting, and the re-emergence of life within Juliette Binoche, which had to be gradually worked into the palette. (In 1988, he earned a third Oscar nod for his clean work on Barry Levinson's "Rain Man.")