Esquire, The Little Watch Book
Esquire
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Shiny
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Glass
Esquire, The Little Watch Book.
The Little Watch Book is about the quality of the watches, so the pictures had to be about the watches and nothing else. Take away the set and the props and a watch has nowhere to stand. Lay it flat instead and the case, the bezel and the bracelet all collapse into one plane. The strap became the stand. Leather straps and metal bracelets curled into loops so each watch holds itself upright on plain warm grey seamless, with no set and no props anywhere in frame. The armature is the product.
A broad soft key with one soft edged shadow lets the specular run unbroken across polished case, bezel and brushed links, which is what quality actually looks like in a photograph. Several frames pull in tight on dial and bracelet, where the finishing has to survive a macro crop. One treatment used the same watch twice, moving through the foreground as a blurred leading line with the still watch framed behind it. More editorial watch photography sits with the rest of the work on the jewellery and watches page. Several of these were shot as layered workups, each element captured on its own pass so the case, the bracelet, the shadow and the specular stay separable afterwards. I then animated those layers in After Effects to bring the visuals to life in motion, so the light travels across the case and the strap unfurls out of stills rather than out of filmed footage.
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