For one of our clients Renard Watches we’ve created multiple photo series of different models for their online and offline marketing. Working with different shiny reflection materials, combined with mat leather straps comes with some challenges. These tips will upgrade your end result to high quality watch photography without too much effort.
The story behind lifestyle watches is that you can buy multiple watches instead of one. With styling you can say who you are without having to speak. Renard is a timeless quality watch that is inspired by vintage watches. Working with different background surfaces, clothing and colourtones the brand gets reinforced by the pictures.
Keep your workspace clean and organized. Having different clock cases combined with different straps makes hundreds of different combinations that have to be captured. Also wear white gloves to avoid dust and fingerprints on the product. These details can be nasty to photoshop out later.
Whenever you’ve organized your workspace and layout all the watches make sure all the watches so the time is ten-past-ten. Look online and you will see that all brands from cheap to luxurious show the time of ten-past-ten. This indirectly makes the watch smile and look positive. Also most watches place their logo in the upper middle part and the model name underneath, so the pointers are not in front of it.
As mentioned before most used materials in the watches are highly reflecting. Just like photographing for example glass bottles this is where you can make a difference in low- and high quality looking images. For lifestyle watches we don’t use a lot of external light because we want to move around freely and let the model read, talk or readjust the watch while we take pictures. Holding the camera in your right hand and having a small black foam board we can block the light falling on the watch. While photographing you will see the magical result when holding the cardboard correctly, practicality all the reflections disappear. Changing your angle can also work, but is not optimal.
Work with the Unique Selling Points of the watch model. We like to put a bit extra in our campaign imagery by closely looking at the specificaties of the watch to get inspired by adding more story to the photo. The Renard Watches for instance are waterproof, they didn’t share that story towards the customers, so we’ve suggested photographing them in water. These extra bits of information about the product can give you more handlebars for concepting an awesome campaign.
