BYWAYS. Photographs by Roger A Deakins

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Deakins’ other current project is the latest in his long collaboration with Mendes, “Empire of Light.” The film draws from events and people in Mendes’ life and represents his only solo writing credit to date (his only other screenplay shared with Krysty Wilson-Cairns for “ 1917,” for which Deakins won his second Oscar). Low point: “Being fired from a movie set. But thankfully there have been far more highs than lows.” I simply use a still camera to record an image of a location or a set so that I can then use it as a reference,” he says. “These photos … are only spacial references [and not to examine the lighting].” Today’s small mirrorless cameras can produce high-quality video, but Deakins does not believe this can lead to an increased interest in filmmaking/cinematography by still photographers. Deakin first worked in advertising as a copywriter and creative director for Colman Prentis and Varley, while living in Bayswater, London. He was responsible for the National Coal Board slogan "Come home to a real fire". Following this, he taught French and English at Diss Grammar School for three years. [1] [3]

Deakin married Jenny Hind in 1973 with whom he had a son, Rufus, before the marriage was dissolved in 1982. [1] Deakin died, aged 63, in Mellis, Suffolk. He had been diagnosed with a brain tumour only four months previously. Her work has also appeared in places like Certified Forgotten and Blossom Mag, as well as on podcasts like Casterly Talk, and her own show, Does It Get the Pass?, where she dissects the history and common tropes of the romantic comedy with her co-host and fellow writer, Rebecca Radillo. Deakins has still not been able to forget his attraction for the British seaside, despite living for many years in Santa Monica, California. He grew up in Torquay, a seaside town on the southern edge of England. The history and nostalgia of the Victorian and Gregorian structures still linger in his mind.

No specifics have been given about the photography included in Byways, but according to Distributed Art Publishers, the book’s American distributor, it will gather three suites of images together, chronicling the change in Deakins’ photographic style over time: He also has a podcast called Team Deakins. It's a weekly show he does with his wife James about cinematography, the film business and whatever other questions listeners submit to the show.

James [his wife] and I really didn’t want to do anything that was about movies. That’s why it was hard to get it published. They wanted that book, they wanted a behind-the-scenes book. This is not that. This is something that was very personal to me — it’s like my sketchbook.I confess to feeling something like jealousy reading the record of Deakin’s wonderful, friend-filled existence, at once liberated and rooted. A boomer, he grew up in a postwar era of optimism and economic prosperity, a working-class scholarship boy at Haberdashers’ Aske’s (“we knew how to use the apostrophe”) who went on to a dreamlike Cambridge of punting and Pimm’s. He became a successful advertising executive, was pursued by any number of girls, then found a ruined farmhouse in Suffolk to which, aged 31, he retired. He then teaches, swims, gets involved in the local “faires”, which are like mini East Anglian Glastonburys, befriends Richard Branson and Andrea Arnold, Richard Mabey and Robert Macfarlane. He’s a terrible poet but a beautiful writer of prose, and records his life as if he knows that a book like this will one day be written about it. Jeff Barrett, ed. (2009). Caught by the River: a collection of words on water. ISBN 978-1-84403-667-7. In the foreword to the book, you write, ‘The choice of when to take a picture, and which of the resultant images has a future, reveals something of us as individuals. Each of us see differently.’ Do you think someone who knows your film work could see these images and know they were made by you? What are the ‘Deakins-isms’ we might see here?