Before I even begin I would like to apologise for the end result (don’t look now). I’m sure many who read this want the basics. Maybe a nice head on shot without bright spots, deep shadows and pin sharp throughout. Sorry to disappoint. For Part 1 I have gone a little overboard and aimed quite high. In doing so I hope that I can inspire your creativity and at the same time, give you some tips that can help you improve or perfect your efforts at watch photography.

I have been practising photography since the age of 13 when I got my first camera and set up a darkroom. Being able to fully understand and control the entire process is the essential ingredients in any creative medium in order to start expressing yourself as an artist. Over the past 30 something years I have improved my technical skills and more recently fully embraced the digital process. The artistic side is subjective and I consider myself to be a reasonable amateur. Collecting watches and photography go hand in hand especially since we share our watch passion mainly by exchanging words and photographs via the internet and email. Collecting watches is an enjoyable pastime and so too is photography. Combining these two interests doubles the fun.

When I started photographing watches I struggled to get the images I wanted. I was using natural light and would set up near a window on a bright day with lots of white reflective material around the subject. Its not easy and I never achieved a standard that I was happy with. I was also relying on the sunshine and living in the UK that’s not a good idea. So I decided to set up a simple studio with artificial lighting which meant that I could take pictures whenever I felt like it including at night.

This is my shed at the end of the garden:

In the corner of the shed I have a cupboard space 1 meter wide with a work surface at 900mm high. Just outside and to the right is a wall mounted magazine rack that holds all manner of white, black and coloured card and paper. More on that later.

I have 4 no. 600 x 600mm surface mounted fluorescent light fittings with daylight bulbs positioned on the ceiling, one on each side of the work surface and one (not shown) which sits on the work surface acting as a light box. I rarely use all 4 at the same time, I hardly ever use the ceiling mounted fitting and more often than not I just use 1 light to the right (or left) of the subject.

For the background I use either black or white card that slopes from the base up to the wall creating a nice and even curve. There is always lots of blue-tack (also known as white-tack, press stick etc) lying around. I use it to fix the card to the wall and hold the front edge to the work surface.

The lights are standard commercial fittings but not the flush mounted type that sit in a ceiling grid system. These are designed to be fixed flush to the underside of a ceiling and therefore have a finished edge which means that they sit nicely on the work surface and can be moved if necessary. I use tracing paper and opaque acrylic to cover the bulbs. This is essential; it acts as a diffuser to achieve a soft and even light.

As you can see the camera (Nikon D300) is mounted on a tripod with a cable release. Most of my shots are taken with a 50mm macro lens. I do have a 105mm macro lens as well as some extension tubes for close up work. I always shoot in RAW file format and post process the images using Photoshop CS3. I will go into more detail on equipment and Photoshop later in the series.

Now to the specifics of the image in question (don’t look down!). I had the idea for this shot in my mind for quite some time. In other words I pre-visualised the final result long before I actually took it. The subject I chose was a recently received Fume Silverstone, possibly one of the most photogenic vintage Heuer watches around. I started by suspending the watch on fishing line from a pole that was supported by the two light fittings on either side. I used more fishing line and of course blue-tack to stabilise the base so that the front of the watch was parallel to the back of the camera and perfectly still.

I closed up the white space on the base with a piece of black card to reduce the amount of reflective light coming from below. I used one light (right of subject) with a selection of diffusers/reducers including transparent black fabric, solid black card and white paper. The light fitting to the left of subject was off but acted as a reflector illuminating the left side of the subject. I set up the camera with a piece of black card with a cut out that fits over the lens. This and the other haphazard arrangement of card and paper is designed to reduce glare on the crystal and at the same time illuminate the subject. This arrangement is by trial and error. I will do test shots, view the result on the camera screen in high magnification always looking for unsightly reflections, bright spots and dark areas and change the position of the cards to improve the result. I also check exposure this way as I always set the camera to manual and pre select an aperture. In this case I used f/16 which gives a good amount of focus through the subject from front to back (known as depth of field) and vary the shutter speed to find the correct exposure which in this case was 1 second.

It is worth noting at this stage that I always clean the watch case and crystal before setting the watch in place and in most cases I take the final image when the hands are at 8 or 9 minutes past 10 and the chrono hand is stopped around the 23 second mark. I don’t worry about the date or sub register hands. This is a timing issue. Miss the shot and it usually involves resetting the time. Often the complex arrangement of cards and paper comes crashing down and in this case, the watch starts moving around on the suspension system. Then of course you have the fingerprint on the case which will need cleaning again. I am sure you would agree at this point that it is a finicky business and definitely a labour of love so you will be forgiven if you skip to the end and go back to your tried and tested technique.

As I said above, I pre visualised this shot and what I saw in my minds eye was a stationary picture of a watch with some motion blur in the background. Having achieved part 1 of the image I then removed the lower stabilising lines without altering the camera position in any way. I changed the shutter speed to ¼ of a second and started the watch in a pendulum motion swinging from side to side. I did a number of shots which were all different because of the timing of the shutter release and because the watch was also spinning creating different reflections of light. I also achieved different patterns and degrees of motion blur.

The studio session now over it was time to view the images on the computer. With all the test shots and motion shots I had a total of 48 images – its digital and cost nothing so why settle for one or two when you have gone to all this trouble. I use Photoshop Bridge to view all the images and to make my final selections. I open the RAW images using the Photoshop RAW converter. This gives you all sorts of options to change the image including temperature, tint, clarity etc etc etc. The list of options is almost endless. I prefer to do most of my image processing in Photoshop and not in the RAW converter. Processing the image is an intuitive exercise combining software knowledge and the ability to know what you want to achieve before you even begin. This bit is hard to explain and even harder to teach. Lets just say that for the first image, I composed and cropped as necessary, set the contrast using levels and sharpened the image. These are the three steps I do on almost every image. In addition, I also darkened the background of this shot.

I selected and opened the second image as before and using the same RAW converter setting as I used in image 1 so that they matched in tone and colour temperature. I’m sure I did a fair bit to the image in particular darkening the right side to get an even illumination from left to right. This image will become the new background and complete the process.

Now the clever bit made so much easier by Photoshop and the digital process. Combining Image 1 and 2 is simply a matter of moving one image into the other. The next trick is using layers in Photoshop. Once again hard to explain but there are many books covering this subject and when you know how it is the most amazing Photoshop tool amongst many amazing Photoshop tools. Add a bit of blending some jiggery pokery and we now have the end result.

Congratulations if you got this far. I hope you enjoyed the tutorial and that it inspires you to be creative with your watch pictures, take better pictures in general and maybe even learning Photoshop if you have not already done so. Look out for Part 2.
Regards
Paul
www.heuerworld.com