Jonny Wilson is a UK-based product photographer with a particular passion for capturing watches. Each piece he photographs stands out for its uniqueness, presenting him with diverse and demanding challenges that he masters with exceptional skill and creative precision.
Jonny Wilson: „The 10:10 ‘rule’ with the hands on watches isn’t a set rule, there are actually some brands that go totally their own way with the positioning of the hands. It’s a position that looks good as it usually keeps the hands out of the way of complications and sub-dials on a watch. However, in this case, setting the hands to that position covers up a lot of the logo, so I set the hands 9:14 which still gave nice symmetry to the watch, but allowed the logo to be seen in the best way. When working with brands though, they will tell you where they want their hands positioned.
First, I set up the position of the watch and camera, so I can build the lighting around them and leave them in place. I always start lighting the side that would affect the front side of the watch - so in this case, it was the lighting coming from the left.
There are 3 lights here, two Siros 800 S (lights 1 & 2) which have L40 reflectors with narrow and medium honeycomb grids on them. These grids allow me to get the gradients on the diffusion paper that I need to show off the curves on the watch and give the image shape. Due to the small size of watches, without precise lighting it can look very flat. The lights are positioned to light up the top and bottom straps in the photo.
I then used one of my Picolites with the fresnel attachment (light 3) which is hitting higher up on the diffusion paper - this is lighting the bezel at the 2/3 o’clock position and also the top right lug of the watch. This light brought out a wonderful texture in the bezel, which shows that it is a matt finish, not reflective. On the other side, I used a Siros 800 S with the umbrella attachment on (light 4), this is positioned behind and is feathered away from the watch to create the gradient. This light is lighting up the crown and the side of the watch above the crown.
The Picolite on the same side (light 5) does have a grid attachment on to give another focused area of light with a gradient and is lighting the side of the watch underneath the crown.
Both images for the case and strap and the image of the watch face were “focus stacked” to give full detail from front to back.The Projection attachment was used on the 3rd Picolite to capture the image that I used for the face of the watch alongside all the other lights. It wasn’t used in capturing the case and strap of the photo which is the lighting set up shown in the BTS image. I’d like to say a massive thank you to Bremont for letting me borrow a watch for this shoot.”
