A generous friend recently offered GaryG the opportunity to shoot his white gold Kari Voutilainen Masterpiece Chronograph II so that Gary is able to share photos of both his custom pink gold Chronograph II in comparison to his friend’s custom white gold version.
For this edition of Behind the Lens, GaryG shares a series of photographs of one of the great watches of our time, the Philippe Dufour Duality. The Duality, with its linked twin escapements, was originally planned for production in a series of 25 watches. In a turn of events that seems almost unbelievable today, a lack of initial demand eventually led Dufour to limit production to just nine pieces.
As part of my “enthusiast collector” role here at Quill & Pad I will be taking a look at watches that strike my fancy, and sharing the visual results with you along with a few observations on photography, the watches themselves, and the collectors who own them.
Let’s get started, shall we? Our subject for this episode: the F.P. Journe Tourbillon Souverain with remontoir d’égalité.
GaryG ordered a Hasselblad X1D and received it just in time to use it for some candid portraits during Baselworld 2017. He had never shot a medium-format camera before, and the resolving power, color rendering, and ability to seemingly wrap light around a subject completely blew him away. So when Hasselblad announced that it would be offering a 120 mm macro lens for the X1D, he was among the very first to sign up. But did it make a difference in his watch photography?
One of the great pleasures of being a contributor here at Quill & Pad is that it gives me an excuse to set aside other priorities on a regular basis and immerse myself in the world of macro watch photography. Along the way, I’ve been asked by a number of folks to reveal techniques that I use to create the images you see in my articles, so here are some of my tips.
In 1985 I walked into Hackney Technical College; the course on horology had already started two weeks earlier, but I was welcomed on board. And so began my education in horology. But how did I come to found The Naked Watchmaker?
As regular readers know, the idea of the Behind the Lens series is to present great watches as seen from a variety of visual perspectives. Mostly, I feature watches on loan from my generous friends, but this time let’s look at a piece that I am very fortunate to have in my own collection: the legendary Simplicity by Philippe Dufour in a 37 mm white gold case with white lacquer dial.
Atom Moore is a New York-based watch photographer who has a unique eye on his subject: his “portraits” comprise artistic works of watch photography based on his signature macro and “mashup” techniques. The NAWCC Watch and Clock Museum in Columbia, Pennsylvania will be hosting an exhibition of Moore’s work from April 30, 2017, which you can check out here.
Recently, a good friend and avid collector gave me the mouth-watering opportunity to photograph two splendid Patek Philippe minute repeaters: the 5074P and 5078P. If you’re one of those people who believe in wearing a watch with your tuxedo, I don’t think you’d ever go wrong in pulling the 5078P out of the safe to wear. What else is interesting about it?
Given my recent musings on these pages about the relative roles of rarity and complication in driving the value of a watch, it seems appropriate to dedicate this “Behind the Lens” entry to a piece that is both complicated and limited in production: Patek Philippe’s Reference 5950A. What’s so special about this watch? Well, first of all it’s a split-seconds chronograph. What else?