There have been many great cinematographers and film directors with a sharp photographic eye for lighting and composition. I have always felt that Stanley Kubrick was a cut above the rest. He could photograph a scene that is lighted with dull, mundane overhead fluorescents and manage to make it look interesting and original. I have always said that if you start playing a Kubrick picture, I defy you to take your eyes off it. I know I can't.
Below is a still from "The Killing" (1956). This shot is a prototypical, hard example of chiaroscuro (even bordering on cameo) lighting. The illumination is selective, the background predominantly dark, and there is a high contrast between the lighted areas and their attached shadows, accentuating and intensifying the noir-ish, gangster vibe of the picture. The harsh, angled lighting further illustrates the three dimensionality of the subjects, ie, the arm of the man far left of frame, with the very fast falloff on the creases of his jacket.
This is an early photograph from Kubrick. It employs chiaroscuro lighting in the vein of Rembrandt; the lighting is again, selective, and generally low-key. The background is illuminated, but the fairly high contrast between light and shadow creates a density and three-dimensionality about the woman standing in lingerie in the foreground, and the woman sitting at the desk in the middleground. The source of illumination is directional, making many lighted areas of the woman abruptly convert into dense attached shadow.
Below is a classic image from "The Shining" (1980). Note that the hallway is fully lit and just shy of high-key; opposite of what you'd expect from a horror movie. Kubrick's ability to successfully defy normal conventions and break new ground in such an understated manner is evident in this film. The scene is brightly lit, yet the twin's faces manage to have a fast falloff, particularly on the eyes, giving them a ghostly, unsettling appearance. Kubrick proved here with his adaptation of "The Shining", that subjects in a horror picture do not always have to be done up in a classically macabre manner and lit low-key to be disturbing.
This is another early one from Stanley's excursions with Look Magazine in the 40's. The photograph has an angular, yet predominantly horizontal composition. The placement of human subjects naturally leads the eye from left to right. As it is quite dense on the left portion of the frame (headed by the bold, heavily shadowed waiter in the foreground) the well lit chef to the right of frame balances it out, almost providing a reverse value framing for the folks sitting at the table. The key light in the shot is definitely the prominent and driving light source, with very little effect from any back or fills.
This is a still from Kubrick's breakthrough feature, "Paths of Glory" (1957), which is a good display of a deep focus shot with an ideal potential for a rack focus. Stanley always liked to use a long lens to shallow the depth of field (in my films, I zoom in quite a bit to essentially the same effect) which gives everything a flatter, painting-like look. Again, Kubrick's photography is analogous to an artist painting a canvas. His canvas was the camera frame, and his means of painting in it was the meticulous manipulation of light and shadow, field depth, and of course, the positioning of the subjects. Kirk Douglas's focus can easily be pulled here to the soldier behind him, left of frame, and pulled right back to Kirk; a basic, prototypical setup for pull/rack focusing.
Below, is a still from "A Clockwork Orange" (1971), and a decent example of silhouette lighting, in which the background is fully lit and the subjects in front of it aren't lit at all. As a result, the features of the gang of troublemakers cannot be made out, as they appear as mostly dense shadows. And, since the strong light source is coming from behind, long, dense cast shadows are created by the subjects, stemming from their feet in the midground, extending all the way to (and way past) the foreground.
Kubrick was a master of the art of visual symmetry. This shot, from Kubrick's epic scifi masterpiece "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968), is a fine example of this. The negative/positive values of the white and black portions of the ship hull create a forced and archetypal one-point perspective, and its lines literally shoot out at you from the octagonal hatch that they begin from. And the protagonist's placement at the very center, almost one step ahead of midground, balances out this symmetry perfectly.
In this early shot of Stanley's from his Look days, there is much leading room from the jaded woman on the left. If it weren't for her large message written on the wall, this would have left the photo with tremendous negative space, in turn making it appear unbalanced and dull.
Back to "Paths of Glory". This is a wonderful shot because it employs much of the lovely craft and aspects of photography. The man is framed a medium close up, fairly left of frame, and with a decent amount of head room. This creates the sense of the space, the vastness and openness of the room. We can tell that the ceiling is very high, in that the soldiers in the mid and background have a tremendous amount of space above their heads. The weight of the shot, in regards to the man in the foreground, is balanced out nicely by the cluster of men to the right of frame in the mid ground. The other factor that further communicates the epicness of the space in the size of the room, is Kubrick's use of the short lens. With a short lens, you get a very deep depth of field; the subject is highly in focus and very separated from the background, and in turn gives it a much more three dimensional look (as opposed to the other shot of Kirk Douglas from earlier). This shot could also be an example of Rembrandt lighting. The background is lit, but the lighting is more selective and not completely omnipresent and evenly distributed. The attached shadows on the man are mostly transparent, and in some areas, there is fairly fast falloff (particularly in the man's eyes and under his nose). You can tell that the main light source (the key light) comes from the front of the man and slightly above, and there is enough fill to render all areas visible. Overall, there is a density and volume here, and most of all, a broad sense of depth.
Below: simply a great, classic, symmetrical closeup from "2001".
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