Michael Chapman, an acclaimed cinematographer who fell in love with the Island as camera operator during the filming of Jaws, died at his home in Los Angeles on Sept. 20 of congestive heart failure. He was 84.

He was the director of photography on numerous iconic films of the late 20th century, receiving Oscar nominations for Raging Bull and The Fugitive, as well as the American Society of Cinematographers Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Camerimage Festival’s prestigious Golden Frog award for cinematography.

Born in 1935 in Wellesley, he was the eldest son of Raymond and Eileen Chapman, a teacher and a librarian. He went to Andover Academy and attended Columbia University. After college, he worked on the Erie Lackawanna Railroad as a brakeman before being given his first job as a camera assistant by his father in law, French-born cinematographer Jo Brun.

He later teamed up with cinematographer Gordon Willis, working as his camera operator in the early 1970s on several New York-based films, including Up The Sandbox, Little Murders and The Landlord. His big break occurred in 1972 when director Hal Ashby asked him to shoot The Last Detail, starring Jack Nicholson. He was cinematographer Bill Butler’s camera operator on Jaws, much of which was filmed on a boat with a handheld camera. The next year, Martin Scorsese asked him to be director of photographer on Taxi Driver, beginning a close collaboration with the famed director for whom he also served as cinematographer on Raging Bull and The Last Waltz.

He then moved to Los Angeles, and began working on bigger, more mainstream Hollywood films. In 1993, he received his second Oscar nomination for The Fugitive. He also directed two films of his own: All the Right Moves, with Tom Cruise, and Clan of the Cave Bear. After retiring he taught at the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem.

He bought a home in Vineyard Haven after filming Jaws, and later moved to Chilmark. He loved the Vineyard, especially Clam Point Cove, where he went swimming and clamming almost every day in the summer.

He is survived by his wife of 40 years, writer/director Amy Holden Jones, their two children, Emma and Patrick, as well as two children by his first wife, Myriam Chapman, Andrew and Jonathan, and four granddaughters.

Donations can be sent to the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation, P.O. Box 1088, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568, or sheriffsmeadow.org.