What were my challenges while photographing this particular watch?
My aim was to give the watch its elegancy look. I had to take care of the reflections and make sure the texture of the wristband was visible. Obviously to get all this character nicely demonstrated in a photograph I needed to choose the right light shapers.
First of all I set my backlight. The backlight was responsible for the edge light around the watch and the piece of black wood. That backlight was created with broncolors smallest Softbox 35x60 in combination with an edge mask. The edge mask was used to only create a rim light and not get the atmosphere destroyed while using a bigger illuminated diffusor.
Then my focus was on setting up my second light which should illuminate the clock face. The clock face was not that easy to capture without reflections in the glass. The clock face reacts like a mirror meaning that when photographing a reflective surface the angle of incidence of light equals the angle of reflections. That means you want to place your light at an angle where you don’t see the light directly reflecting back at the camera.
The third light was a Picolite in combination with the Projection attachment. The Picolite is a brilliant lamp if you need to set the light precisely, especially when photographing small objects. The Picolite is illuminating a white reflector and bounces back to illuminate the clock face indirectly.
My last step was to highlight certain parts in the image, but I also had to make sure that the forth light wouldn’t destroy the mood of the image. My choice was a second picolite in combination with honeycomb grids. I had to create a very narrow spot, so that it won’t effects parts I didn’t want to illuminate. I created three new highlights while working with the sequence function.
That small little detail gave the image something extra.
