Tutorial: How to Shoot a Studio Product Photo of a Gold Watch

Tutorials are available for photographers of all levels, but many of the tutorials you’ll find online have to do with grasping a basic technique or tackling an intermediate lighting scenario. The above tutorial falls much closer to the pro level.

Photographer Phillip McCordall — an award-winning still life photographer — put this tutorial together to show those interested in jewelry photography how to professionally photograph a highly reflective gold watch.

His final set up and the amount of time he puts into his work is awe-inspiring. Photographing a gold watch may not seem like a complicated task, but getting the lighting just right usually takes him an hour of positioning both black and white reflectors, tracing paper and, of course, his light source.

Here’s the final shot:

Every minute detail, down to the exact position of the watch hands (which he maintains is how you can tell a professional watch photographer from an amateur) is thought through. As he explains in a reply to one of his video’s commenters, that’s what makes a photo like this worth $6,000 to a client.

To see more of McCordall’s tutorials or browse through some of his award-winning work, head over to his YouTube channel or check out his website here.

(via Reddit)