Gilbert Taylor a technicolor dream

I've been telling myself lately that as well as watching a film because I admire the director's work, or because it stars one or more of my favourite actors, I should really try to become more aware of the cinematographers, and trace which of my most loved films share the same figure behind the lens - probably usually a man I suspect. So where to start.
Well it's the end of the year, start of a new, the time that we offer respect to those who passed away in the previous year, and in August last year Gilbert Taylor died aged 99, plenty of time there for a film or two.
His most famous work was the very first Star Wars film, now retitled Star Wars IV a New Hope. It was Taylor who wanted the look of the film to be clean, with a unique style that differentiated it from other previous sci-fi films. George Lucas was arguing for a diffused  look, Taylor wanted clarity, and with 20th Century Fox backing him up he eventually won.
A last link to the early days of film, Taylor had been a master of black and white film: Dr Strangelove, and A Hard Day's Night in which he used multiple cameras fitted with zooms.

During WW2  he photographed raid targets, shown to Winston Churchill at Number 10, and covered news stories of every kind.

After the war he worked with the Boulting Brothers on  Brighton Rock and Fame is the Spur (1947).
He began to use reflected light which gave a more natural look and to compensate for shortages of good quality film stock. He also became obsessed with the effects of generous exposures for films showing tough reality such as Yield to the Night (1956). Talking about Repulsion, Polanski commented that he never used a light meter, that his eye for exposures was perfect.

In 1961 he worked on the Avengers TV programme, in the early days of Honor Blackman .

His last film with Polanski, Macbeth, (after Repulsion and Cul de Sac) was in colour but its misty landscapes made it as near to black and white as possible.

He worked with Hitchcock on his penultimate film, Frenzy (1972), saying that Hitchcock never looked through the camera. The film was like a love letter to London.

In 1976 he won a British Society of Cinematographer's award for the Omen, on which he used silk stockings over the lens for a dreamlike effect. For the Death Star climax of Star Wars, he took ideas from the Dam Busters, in which he had worked on the special effects, streaming light onto the sets by chopping holes in the walls.

After Star Wars he went on various locations: Dracula -Cornwall, 1979; Escape to Athena - Greece 1979; Flash Gordon -Scotland , 1980. He retired in 1994 but carried on with commercials for a few years. His widow said that their life together had been a 'technicolor dream.'