What to look for when photographing expensive clock and watches

A world of time

Photographing watches and clocks

It was great to have the opportunity to work with Matt at A World of Time, an amazing business based in Warwickshire. The business specialises in the sale, restoration and repair of clocks and watches.

Clock and watch photography is a specialist area requiring a great deal of skill, particularly in lighting and macro work. All of the products had to be shot on site due to either the size of the item or indeed the value!

The brief for the shoot was to provide a set of images for a new web site for the business. We were also to shoot a number of individual product shots to be used to sell stock on-line.

Images for web site

We wanted to capture the intricacy of the specialist work that Matt does and to show off his skills. These images were to be used in the main part of the new web site. For the clocks and watches, we needed to bring out the high quality whilst maintaining an honest representation of what was being sold. Furthermore, all the products were items of significant value, so great care had to be taken in handling each one. This meant to avoid fingerprints on the fine metal and glass surfaces, cotton gloves had to be used .

Above, we have one example of a beautiful vintage pocket watch that Matt was selling through his site.

In the above shot we show one of the fabulous Breitling watches in a contextual manner with all of the accompanying original packaging and guarantee papers.

Macro clock and watch photography

Here we have used a macro lens to show the detail of the workings of one of the vintage pocket watches.

For us this was a really exciting project to work on as we had to combine a number of approaches. Workplace shots to show the unique abilities and skills offered by the business, classic catalogue shots for on-line sales and macro work to bring out the details in some of the products. All of this was achieved in a day and half on-site shoot.