Town of Banff

Roger Vernon - Filmmaker

A native of Alberta, Roger Vernon has combined his love of the mountains and his desire to make images into a flourishing career as an internationally respected cinematographer. In the twenty-six years since attending The Banff Centre’s two-year Visual Communications program, film producers have used his accumulated mountain skills to photograph sports such as skiing and rock and ice climbing.

His expertise has taken him onto mountains and glaciers around the world, most recently onto the Baltoro Glacier of Pakistan to photograph K2 and environs for the feature film The Vertical Limit. He joined David Breashears on the 1986 American expedition to Mt. Everest to photograph the two documentaries: The Search for Mallory and Irvine  and American Firsts – Women on Everest. He was also behind the cameras for the alpine events in the official film of the 1988 Olympic Winter Games.
 
Although known for his mountain and adventure related subjects, Roger has worked on a multitude of documentaries ranging from natural history and science to the arts. His photography has appeared in productions of the National Film Board of Canada, Discovery, Nova and The Learning Channel to name but a few. All the major networks of North America and Europe have broadcast his work. In addition, he has worked on a number of feature length dramas for Hollywood, most notably Unforgiven, the 1992 western that was nominated for best cinematography and won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Others include: The Edge, Alaska, Alive, Legends of the Fall, The Good Son, Mystery Alaska, and Hoofbeats, for which he spent two months in the Namibian desert filming wildlife and landscapes.
 
With numerous nominations for direction and cinematography to his credit, Roger holds two awards for Best Cinematography from the Alberta Motion Picture Industry Association and a Golden Sheaf award for Best Cinematography from the Yorkton Film Festival.

In 1993, he was inducted into the prestigious Canadian Society of Cinematography. In addition, he is a voting member of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television and currently sits on the Executive Board of The International Photographers Guild.