The Beetle and The Watch Bug
A photo session with vintage cars, watches and a camera from the 1960s — what’s not to like?
2020 was a challenge for my activity as a watch photographer: brands reduced their marketing budget for photos, I couldn’t hang out with my friends to photograph their watches, and uncertainty about the near future blocked my ideas and inspiration.
During this period, I had to alleviate my inner pressure to create and take the free time to reflect on why I enjoy photography and watches in the first place.
A few weeks ago, once lockdown ended in Portugal, I took the opportunity to meet with my friend Bruno Severino. Besides the name, we also share a passion for watches, cars and space history. In a detailed article for the Portuguese watch magazine Espiral do Tempo, Bruno shared a detailed overview of his collecting journey. Since I knew about his epic watch and vintage car collection, I saw this as an opportunity to get back to photography and he quickly accepted my invitation for a photo session with his toys!
So on a cloudy Saturday morning, I was greeted at my doorstep by Bruno and his fantastic Volkswagen Beetle from 1966, a true time capsule restored to a pristine condition.
At the time, this car was designed as a utility vehicle for the masses, simple to build and devoid of any luxuries. The result was a sturdy and well-engineered vehicle that still looks elegant on the modern streets, and it’s probably one of the most recognisable designs of all time.
It was my first ride on a Beetle, and I couldn’t stop smiling during our trip to the industrial area in Lisbon where the photo session took place. It was a delight to hear the sound of the Beetle’s 1300cc engine while the people on the street stared at the car!
We started the photo session with my friend’s famous Moonwatch, the Omega Speedmaster Professional (with the Hesalite crystal, reference 3570.50 for the geeks out there).
Although he owns a modern version of the Speedmaster, its design remained mostly unchanged from the version famously worn by the NASA astronauts during the 1969 moon landing. Its rounded, yet sharp case lines are pure space-age 60s and a perfect match to the car’s curves.
The watch was easier to photograph than I anticipated, as the domed acrylic cristal provided a uniform illumination to the dial and the polarizing filter on my camera lens handed most of the reflections. The soft glow of the stainless steel case and bracelet matched the chrome details on the car, highlighting the beauty of this car+watch combination!
The only hurdle while photographing this watch was the lack of a hacking feature on its hand-wound movement — the watch keeps ticking even when the crown is pulled, so to capture the hands at the (almost) mandatory 10:10, we had to set up the watch a few minutes before the desired time and wait for the hands to catch up. Fortunately, Omega listened to their customers, and their most recent version of the Moonwatch now comes equipped with a hacking movement — excellent news for photographers and precision fanatics!
We then switched to a vintage sibling from the same brand, an Omega Dynamic. This one screams a 1970s aesthetics, with its UFO-shaped oval case, orange accents, wide racing strap, and a Portuguese day display for added authenticity — nowadays, even the most premium luxury brands forget this detail and include an English day indicator regardless of the client’s home language.
This Omega was another brilliant watch collecting choice by my friend, perfect for those racier days when you want to hit the gas and add more dynamic to your day (see what I did there?)
Bruno also brought his more formal timepiece, the Junghans Max Bill Automatic. Max Bill was a former student at the Bauhaus school of design, and this watch is the perfect example of the minimalist aesthetic that was taught there.
The 38mm polished case has a bubble shape, with smooth lines and very short lugs, placing all the visual interest on the silver dial. For me, the typography choice for the Arabic numerals is what makes this watch stand out: their size and spacing are perfectly proportioned, and that “4” takes the crown as one of the most quirky and fun numbers I’ve ever encountered on a watch!
Unfortunately, capturing the beauty of the silver dial under direct sunlight proved to be quite a challenge, since the dial shines too much compared to its surroundings. This time I was defeated, but I’ll try to photograph it again in the future!
The final watch of the day was one of my favourite dive watches of all time — the Oris Divers 65 in 40mm.
When it was released, it became an instant success by the independent brand from Holstein. Based on their historical skin diver design from the 60s, it features a slim case, an impressive double domed sapphire crystal and a black aluminium dive bezel. The cream-coloured lume for the hands and funky numerals is the perfect fit for the vintage vibes this reissue piece was after.
From my experience, I avoid photographing Oris dive watches in a studio environment, since their glossy mirror-like dials are very reflective and tricky to illuminate. Yet, shooting it outside was a very pleasant experience, thanks to my polarizing filter that minimized glare, together with my friend’s posing abilities to avoid reflections under the direct sunlight.
The glossy dial looks almost pitch black in certain angles, contributing to the visual depth that I’m always aiming for.
Capturing cars and watches in a single image can be tricky due to their scale difference. While posing and setting the scene, it’s necessary to find a balance between having a legible watch, but with enough context around it to convey a story.
For the majority of the session, I used a telephoto macro lens (Fujifilm 60mm f/2.4 macro) and stood far away from the scene to provide the necessary space. The Oris shot with the keyring was one of my favourites, where we framed the car in the background to provide a sense of motion to the image. I also experimented with a wide-angle lens (Fujifilm 18mm f2), using the optical distortion to make the watches in the foreground appear almost as large as the car in the background.
In my studio work, I tend to do very thorough edits using composites and dozens of layers to perfectly display the watches. But for this session, I tried to detox from my usual editing process, opting instead to enjoy the simplicity of capturing the images right on the camera with minimal edits in post.
All the images were shot in JPEG using Fujifilm’s ‘Classic Chrome’ colour profile, which gives them these muted pastel tones and it’s perfectly suited for the atmosphere I had in mind for this session. The film-like grain was added in-camera for extra vintage vibes and perceived sharpness!
Our session was almost over, but I had another trick up my sleeve: since we had a 1960s car and plenty of vintage-inspired watches, I brought my 1969 Rolleiflex 2.8F medium format film camera to finish the session in style!
I’ve previously used my Rolleiflex for watch photography, and it’s a tricky, yet rewarding process. Using a camera without batteries or screens is a very pure experience, and the results have an authentic vintage look that I find difficult to replicate using modern lenses and digital cameras.
Armed with my previous knowledge, I used smaller apertures to maximise depth of field and I kept the camera parallel to the scene to avoid parallax errors. This time I got 7 interesting images from the 12-shot roll — not bad, considering the hundreds of pictures I’ve previously made with the digital camera!
It was at this point that I’ve realized how cohesive and diverse my friend’s watch collection has become — his collecting decisions follow a pattern towards modern watches based on iconic designs from the 60s and 70s.
What I found even more interesting was that all the pieces had domed crystals (from the original acrylic and hesalite to the modern and more durable sapphire used today). We had a great morning and it was great to see such a diverse collection that reveals so much about my friend’s personality and tastes!
