IWCee What You Did There
Photo experiments in with an epic watch collection
My 2021 goal to photograph my friends and their remarkable watch collections fell a bit short. By the end of the year, I only counted two successful sessions: the first one with Luís and his unique Oris, and the other with Bruno, his Volkswagen Beetle and beautiful watches.
This year I decided to pick up where I left the project, and the first ‘victim’ was José Zenha — a super cool guy that loves his boards (both surf and skate), but also his watches. His Instagram name, @iwcfishcrown, is well deserved considering the epic IWC collection he gathered over the years.
When I plan a photo session with a friend, I always try to match the theme with their watches, hobbies and lifestyle. Since José is an architect, I wanted to feature a design element on this shoot, while remaining cool and casual — perhaps with one of his skateboards?
Before the shoot, I already had an idea for the spot and some compositions in mind. Close to my house there is a concrete sculpture, painted in a very bright red colour, with a ton of potential for a colourful and dynamic background. I had previously made some photo experiments there with my film camera, exploring the layers and shadows that this structure creates.
My friend brought with him four beautiful IWC watches from the early 2000s, a period we both consider the brand’s peak of creativity, following the quartz crisis that affected the watch industry in the 1970s and early 1980s. Current models look too safe for my taste, whereas these watches feature bold designs and were made to be worn. We started off with his Ingenieur (ref. iw3227), a real tank with its integrated bracelet, brushed case, and black textured dial. As proof of its robustness, my friend even uses it while surfing — no shelf queens here!
For this shoot, I used my current digital setup, the Fujifilm X-T3 with a 60mm macro lens and a polariser filter. Most IWC watches feature a great anti-reflective coating on their crystals, but the polariser ensures that glare is reduced while the dial and hands stay nice and shiny.
A long time had passed since I picked up my digital camera, so we started the session with simple compositions and in a shaded area, exploring some poses with the watches and my friend’s skateboard. Placing these two objects in the same image proved to be a bit tricky due to their scale difference — if the skate is fully visible, the watch appears too small in the image; and if I focus on the watch, then the skate gets reduced to a wood board or a plastic wheel. A common workaround for this issue is to place two images side-by-side, one where the watch is the main element, and another to provide the context.
We then switched to my favourite of the bunch, the GST Rattrapante in a 43mm titanium case (ref. iw371503). I didn’t expect this watch to be so cool, but I was really smitten with the case shape, sandblasted finish and yellow details. This watch is feather-light and it adapts perfectly to my tiny wrist — if they made it in a smaller size, I would definitely shortlist it as my next watch. I went for a warmer colour balance to highlight the yellow details, and we even found the perfect flower to match the dial and complement the composition.
After the initial experiments with the skateboard, we switched to the red sculpture and started by capturing some shots of his Portugieser (ref. iw5454). The red background felt like the right choice: the deep red is one of our national colours, and this watch was first developed in the 1930s as a request from two Portuguese merchants, who demanded a large wristwatch with the precision of a pocket watch. The rest, as they say, is history.
On a technical side, I found the red colour to be the most demanding to photograph and edit. The human eye is very sensitive to red light, and a small variation in hue, saturation or contrast can dramatically affect how we perceive this colour. I had to do tiny tweaks on each image to match them as best as possible while avoiding orange or burgundy tones as a result.
As the skies cleared the light got increasingly harder, so we had to move fast for the final composition that I had in mind, my pièce de résistance. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to feature all four watches in a single image, so I decided to try something that I had never done before. After placing the camera on a tripod, we made a variety of separate images with the watches peeking out from the red structure and I then merged these into a single shot. I can’t thank enough José for his patience, since he had to juggle multiple watches and experiment with a ton of poses while I stood still, giving basic directions and pressing the camera buttons.
I definitely recommend that you click to zoom on this one.
Time moves fast, and I really missed these sessions — being able to spend a morning outside with a friend, while talking watches and photography was a great feeling and really made my creative juices flow again. Some say that once one learns how to ride a bike, they can never forget, but the same logic doesn’t apply to photography. Without practice, the eye gets lazy, and I ended up doing a ton of mistakes. My success rate was much lower than I’m used to, with plenty of blurred images and rushed compositions. But what matters most is that I really enjoyed this return to watch photography, and I can’t wait to repeat it very soon.
