Alan Grant faces off against the T-Rex, attempting to lure her away from the overturned Explorer with Lex and Tim trapped inside.

I love this shot, especially in its relationship to one of the core themes of this movie: Can man, with all of his technology, control nature? In this shot we see that modern technology has failed. The electric fence has been torn down and the car is destroyed. The T-Rex, with her imposing size and barred teeth, is primal brute strength that doesn't care about technology. Conversely, that Grant has is his clothing and the flare, practically no different than a caveman with fire. These two beings are the top animals of their times, the Tyrannosaur is the King of the Tyrant Lizards and humans are the greatest of the Great Apes. As they both facing off for a battle over the prey laying wounded between them, we wonder who will win.

This is a basic rule-of-thirds composition. If you were to imagine the terrain extending infinitely into the distance, that horizon would likely rest roughly midways up the concrete base of the fence. Overlaying the rule-of-thirds grid on top of the image, we see that's exactly where the bottom third starts.

This composition also nicely compartmentalizes the T-Rex, Alan Grant, and the car, with the T-Rex predominately taking the top two boxes of the left third, Grant mostly in the right third's lower two boxes and the car evenly in the bottom two boxes of the middle third. I want to point out how symmetrical Grant and the T-Rex are like this, almost mirroring each other's layouts.

The use of leading lines in this shot is minor, but they do exist, helping pull our eye from Grant towards the T-Rex.

Most notably is Grant's right arm, extending across his body into the middle of the frame, ending in the flare, with it's flaming tip pointing at the T-Rex. The damaged fence, as a whole, pretty much mirrors Grant's outline and basically parallels the flare's flame, taking us almost all of the way to the T-Rex. A second leading line is the track in the vehicle roadway, curving from Grant's foot to the T-Rex's.

This is a dark scene. It's night. and it's raining. However, there appears to be at least three light sources, all out of frame. One light, above the frame, serves as a key light, while two lights on the left side of the frame are acting as fill lights. Based on the shadows of the T-Rex, particularly under it's right eye, it looks like the one of the fill lights is slightly above and behind the T-Rex. The other fill light, based on the way Grant's left arm casts a shadow on his leg, also seems to come from slightly above and to his rear. These shadows, both on the T-Rex and on Grant's pants leg, are too defined to be from lightning, reflections, or some other in-world source. Instead, they can only be stage lights, especially if the bright overhead key light is supposed to be moonlight. And if it is moonlight, it's a very bright moon to be visible in such a heavy downpour.

So while the lighting is not realistic, it does serves to provide contrast for Grant's blue denim shirt, making him stand out from the background around him. Likewise for the T-Rex, the lighting provides enough illumination to keep her from disappearing into her section of the background. For this reason, the lighting works. Not because it's realistic, but because it helps the viewer see the story taking place.

If there's one color to describe this shot, it's blue. Out of curiosity, I used Photoshop's Average tool to generate a color based on the whole frame, and the resulting color was over 60% saturated with a hue of 220. Pure blue is 240. So it's not just perceptively blue, it's technically blue as well. If the scene is trying to pull us to the ancient past, with our modern fire-wielding caveman facing off against a prehistoric monster, then this overly blue image makes a sort of photographic sense. The cyanotype was one of the first photographic processes, circa 1842, and created strongly blue images. In the same way that Grant's flare and clothing keep him grounded in the present, the singular splash of color in the middle of the frame, the bright red flare and the greens and yellows of the damaged Explorer, similarly keeps the image rooted in today's techniques.

Considering this shot is on a film set, everything is deliberately arranged for this perspective. Obviously this standoff could've been shot differently. It could've been a top-down overhead shot, a side facing one, or even one looking through the legs of the T-Rex. While any one of those can work for a western standoff between two gunslingers, there's one critical difference in this concept. This is about a "monster" versus a human. Since the viewer is almost guaranteed to be human, putting the camera on Grant's side of the standoff puts us in his perspective so that the T-Rex is almost staring us down also. It increases the tension, by letting us feel what Grant is feeling.