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David Lee (born February 16, 1961) is an American unit still photographer. He is the younger brother of film director Spike Lee, and has done the still photography for all of his older brother's feature films before 2013 with the exception of Get on the Bus and He Got Game.
- Miracle at St. Anna
- Malcolm X
- MA Rainey’s Black Bottom
- He Got Game
- Bamboozled
- Blackkklansman
- Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
- She’S Gotta Have It
- Do The Right Thing
- John Wick
A lot of photography has to do with being a good editor. If you’ve got 10 variations of the same shot, they’re 10 subtly different moments. You try to choose a picture that tells the story the best. I recently went back to every shot that I did from this session, and the dynamics of the characters here seemed to make the best frame. The part I love...
The wedding scene was such a quiet moment that I don’t think I got anything really good—or maybe I didn’t shoot anything at all—when they were actually filming. If there’s a really important moment, and I can’t get it during the filming, I have to be in the good graces of the 1st AD, who runs the set (and also, of course, the actors). It just turns...
Again, there were a lot of pictures to choose from, a lot of variations. Here, Chadwick happens to be framed between the two women on the left; a millisecond later, one of those hands is going to be covering his face. If it’s a big scene, and the action is going all the way across the screen, there’s a lot of activity you’re trying to capture. Ther...
This was shot just for the art department. There’s a prop in the movie with a picture of Ray Allen’s character, a high school baller named Jesus Shuttlesworth, on the cover of Sports Illustrated. He’s a high school sensation, so the text under the shot reads “Jesus saves.” And Spike’s idea was to shoot him like that. I came up with the location and...
This was a really strong scene in the movie, where Savion Glover and Tommy Davidson are blacking up their faces for the first time. It’s humiliating, and they both have crises of conscience. They’re really debasing themselves. I think the whole idea here was similar to how the famous performer Bert Williams, who was called Nobody during the minstre...
This is terrifying. This was a moment where I asked for the shot again because obviously he’s looking right into my camera. This was a direct confrontation, and I wanted to get that moment. This shot should piss the hell out of everybody. You can almost see the disgust or the disdain on his face, and the arrogance in the character. For him to be ch...
I only did a couple of days on this film; I was covering for photographer François Duhamel. This shot was such a challenge because it shouldn’t work—it’s filled with nothingness. But then I look at it again and I think, “Well, the crack in the wall is something that’s subtle, but critical.” In all that dead space, there’s still that little somethin...
Spike used my photographs for a couple of montage scenes in She’s Gotta Have It; those kind of stitched the story together. We didn’t film in the winter, so he just had me go out and shoot winter scenes and then made them a photo montage. He also did that when one of the characters is on the subway. The opening credits are also all the images from ...
Simply put, I couldn’t get that picture. I couldn’t be where the camera was. It’s handheld, and there was no way for me to get an equivalent shot of Radio Raheem, played by Bill Nunn. So it was just a matter of problem-solving. You say, “How can I tell the story here? What can I do to show the process of filmmaking? Alright, let me get a production...
This is a funny one because we were shooting at a spa down in Lower Manhattan, and I was in the pool when I took this picture. I had a bathing suit on under my clothes, and there were a couple of grips in there too, the AC, the focus puller, and the operator. It was a pool party. To get this shot, I had to be almost underneath the camera legs. It w...
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David Lee (born February 16, 1961) is an American unit still photographer. He is the younger brother of film director Spike Lee, and has done the still photography for all of his older brother's feature films before 2013 with the exception of Get on the Bus and He Got Game.
May 2, 2023 · David Lee isn’t just the younger sibling of acclaimed director Spike Lee. He's a renowned talent in his own right, capturing still moments that stand the test of time. Here's a glimpse into the life and work of this celebrated unit still photographer.
Nov 3, 2021 · In an artistic family (Spike and David’s father, Bill Lee, is a well-regarded jazz musician who scored several of Spike’s early films), David took up still photography. Four years Spike’s junior, he discovered photography when an upstairs tenant in their family’s brownstone taught him how to process 35mm black-and-white film.
David Lee (born February 16, 1961) is an American unit still photographer. He is the younger brother of film director Spike Lee, and has done the still photography for all of his older brother's feature films before 2013 with the exception of Get on the Bus and He Got Game.
