Dale Elena McCready BSC NZCS is a cinematographer based in London, but from Auckland, New Zealand. Having worked her way up through the camera department in the 90s to A camera operator and Steadicam owner/operator she first began her work as a cinematographer on the independent feature film “Topless Women Talk About Their Lives” which one best feature in the 1996 NZ Film & TV Awards. 

While still working under other cinematographers, Dale continued to hone her operating skills while concurrently moving up in the drama and commercial world in NZ as a DP. In 2007 she moved the UK to better pursue her career and took over the BBC show Merlin from block 2 season 1 and then shot the majority of the show for its 5 year run, first on 16mm and then 35mm film. After such a great introduction to DPing television drama in the UK she went on to develop the show Atlantis and built a solid knowledge of shooting visual effects material as well as developing her sense of movement and dramatic lighting in order to tell compelling visual stories.

Over the last few years she has tried to concentrate on starting or developing shows such as Tin Star for Sky UK/Amazon Prime and Belgravia for Carnival Pictures along with The Rising for Sky Studios more recently. Dale has also been part of development work recently with the virtual production stage in London for Sky UK. 

She is currently filming blk 2 of The Witcher season 3 for Netflix.

Dale always tries to maintain a sharp sense of where the technology of film-making is going and seeks to help productions big and small push their sense of motion and picture quality further.

Dale is also transgender, coming out in 2018 and transitioning over the past few years. She still operates camera often and even still whips out the steadicam skills on occasion. Despite having done it for nearly 3 decades, she still enjoys it.