Watches — Jonny Wilson

I took the photos for this image nearly 6 months ago, luckily it was only a personal project, so there was no rush for a deadline. I edited it at the time but I felt like something was missing in it so I left it for a while and didn't upload it anywhere until I found the thing that was missing.

The original edited image - it’s nice and clean but just felt a bit empty

Last week I gave an online lecture to the students on my old course at Birmingham City University. While looking through my hard drives for images to show during my presentation, I found an image of stars that I took when I was on a job in Italy back in 2017 and I knew that it would work perfectly as a subtle background for this image.

As soon as I added it in I knew it had finished off the image. I then found a light leak that I had put aside when my camera mechanism went wrong (also in 2017) and used that for some colour in the image - I felt it looked a little like the colours of a nebula.

It's turned out to be one of my favourite watch photos I have made, I'm glad a didn't rush it - and it has made a perfect background for my computer!

Photo commissioned by Struthers Watchmakers

So, I realised that I didn’t explain why I decided to create these images on the last blog post, so here it is.

Nearly three years ago, I developed the idea for this photo of photographing a watch movement in a technical way to make it look as if it has expanded when I used to sell watches that were more expensive than the average ‘everyday’ watch. One of the questions I was asked on a regular basis was ‘why is it so expensive?’.

The answer was sometimes due to the materials (if there was gold included for example) but even if there was a precious material which added to the price, the answer was always because of how intricate and technical the movement was. Unfortunately, with a lot of watches, the movement is hidden from the owner behind a metal case. Sometimes there is a glass back but even in this case, the whole movement can’t be seen.

I wanted to provide an image of the movement in a way that allowed the buyer to see each component, but there was nothing available for me to do so. 

The response I have received from these images has been immense. Although I am not exactly sure how to make this grow, apart from doing more, a lot of comments from places I have posted these on have reinforced my ambition to make this something that is accessible to people - either for a education purpose when selling a watch or for an art installation for someone.

I feel that these images have been a massive success and I plan to continue producing more images in a similar style. If anyone reads this and has an old, automatic/manual watch that they no longer want and wish to donate to me so I can do this with it, please do get in touch!