How To Photograph Watches With Speedlights

Here's a short but very useful photography tutorial by photographer Dustin Dolby that shows you how to photograph watches with basic lighting equipment so you can produce images that are anything but basic. 

As with Dustin's previous tutorials, including photographing a wine bottle, the focus of the tutorial is shaping light so the watch 'pops' from the shot. A dark background is used so the metallic surface of the watch really stands out and as well as speedlights and a stripbox, Dustin also uses a reflector and diffusion disk to ensure the whole watch is illuminated. A final quick pop of flash is used to add shine to the product and masking is applied in Photoshop to create the pure black background. 

Dustin goes into a lot more detail in the tutorial so do hit play on the video above. You may also want to take a look at how Dustin lights and shoots cosmetics, something we covered earlier this year on the site.