If there's one thing prestige directors have in common, it's that most of them keep a stable of consistent professional relationships around them. In commercials, those relationships don't get any more prestigious or consistent than that between director Ivan Zacharias and his trusted eye and longtime DP of over 15 years, Jan Velicky.

While the nature of their partnership has resulted in his becoming one of the most celebrated DPs in the field, Velicky says that as a child of medical professionals growing up in the Czech Republic, film was not an obvious path. "There's not much tradition of filmmaking in our family." Nonetheless, a childhood love of the cinema ultimately led him to Prague's film university, where he made some hard choices about his future. "I didn't feel capable enough to be a director and cinematography looked like [the next] closest [thing]."

After graduating in 1993, Velicky met the burgeoning Zacharias, and the pair began to work together immediately. Over the years they've developed a personal shorthand and a visual style that eschews "fashionable gimmicks and stylistic quirks" in favor of more classical brush strokes. It's a language that stands in stark contrast to a lot of work being done today, and one that Velicky prefers for its elegance. "Pointless tracking around standing or sitting actors is quite horrible, isn't it?" he says. "I mean, you shouldn't do anything without being able to explain why you did it. And the explanation should be relevant."

But don't mistake his deference to simplicity as the hallmark of a technophobe; although his saturated tones recall the pre-digital era, Velicky embraces technology, up to a point. "I am a fan as long as it is used reasonably to simplify, take better control over the whole process or to reduce the costs," he says. "I also really like that it creates the space to correct mistakes." Where it stops being useful, he says, is when its options threaten to override the basic choices every DP must make. "I would suggest not to be focused too much on technical aspects and rather ask often the principal questions: Does this feel natural and authentic? Does it support the story?"