Hillary Spera

Biography:

Hillary Fyfe Spera is an American director of photography. Rather than following a conventional film-school path, she began in still photography and then “learned by doing,” taking on whatever camera or operator work she could find and evolving into being a director of photography. Early in her career, Spera built a diverse body of work that includes documentary features such as After Tiller (2013) and Oxyana (2013), and narrative features such as Wildlike (2014) — the latter filmed on location in Alaska and starring Bruce Greenwood and Ella Purnell. It was for Wildlike that she received the Gerald Hirschfeld A.S.C. Award for Cinematography (Narrative Feature) at the Ashland Independent Film Festival in Oregon in 2015. As Spera’s work progressed, she moved into more high-profile television and streaming productions. She served as director of photography on the mini-series Dexter: New Blood (2021–22), working in highly challenging conditions of snow, cold, and extended exterior shoots. She also brought a distinctly cinematic style to the series Daredevil: Born Again (2025-), drawing inspiration from 1970s New York thrillers and employing vintage anamorphic lenses to bring texture, width, and character to the visual world. Spera emphasises the collaborative nature of cinematography and the idea that a cinematographer serves the crew just as much as the director: “we are only as good as our team — we are not doing this solo.” Although she does not come from a formal graduate-level cinematography program, she counts influential cinematographers such as Harris Savides, Gordon Willis, and Vilmos Zsigmond among her artistic inspirations.