When building a brand imagery from the ground up your relationship to your photographer has a lot of influence on how the brand will look.
In the case of hOme watches, the relationship we had established with our main photographer Roger Baumer was a very healthy and productive one: whenever I came up with an idea, it seemed he would get it straight away and we could start building on it straight away.
This means we've been able to concentrate on producing beautiful images together, spending countless hours hunched over ice cubes, spilling water everywhere, pushing woodchips around, blowing at heaps of styrofoam pearls, adjusting this and that, fiddling with this setting and that flash while discussing whether or not penguins would soon rule the world…
…the hOme icecubes making of will give you a good idea of this process.
The beauty of this is that you come out of each photoshoot with more knowledge, be it about building an image, communicating ideas or even the basic rules of physics and how you go about bending them to your advantage.
For more infos on Roger Baumer's work, take a look at his website.
Sometimes it feels like preparing for a successful photoshoot is like setting up the perfect stage for happy accidents to happen.
When I decided to have all the watches in our first collection shot in ice cubes, it quickly became clear that filming the whole process would be interesting too, not only because we could spare a bit of budget by shooting photo and video at the same time.
This short clip shows how difficult shooting swiss made watches frozen in iceblocks can be. Especially when uninvited penguins keep on popping left, right and center…
My long-time friend Yves Marchon was the one reponsible for shooting all the clips over this two-day photoshoot. We then spent some time together working on the edit.
For more of Yves Marchon's work, have a look at his vimeo page.
This set of images is very dear to me, mostly because they came out exactly how I envisioned them.
Here even more than on any other photoshoot I've directed, everything the image is built on came from me: from the initial idea to figuring out how to physically make it happen all the way to the final composition, each of these images is something I really wanted to see come to life.
That's not to say working with Roger Baumer on these was not a blessing, each time we had a lot of fun figuring out the right lighting to tie it all in.
For more infos on Roger Baumer's work, take a look at his website.
Once you picked the right photographer, to me directing this kind of photoshoot is a bit like real estate: location, location, location… and good timing.
Most of this series started with a cover shot I really wanted to get (the first image), pretty much everything else is a consequence of that idea.
The right photographer in this case? Again… thanks Mr. Baumer.
After laying the base of our "Shopkeeper's Guide", it felt like we needed a video equivalent of it to help get our message across more easily: not everyone has the time or patience to read through a 25 pages document, especially not a kid working at a skateshop on week-ends.
This is how the idea for this "Always Clockwise" series came about.
We'd been wanting to work with our friend Robjn Taylor for a long time, and this felt like a great opportunity to get started.
Robjn being an already accomplished (and very talented) director, actor & script writer, there was no need for a set director here, I focused mostly on location scounting, filming and editing these short pieces.
If you don't know anything about Robjn Taylor… well you should.
…oh and if your want to cover your basics on watchmaking, head over there.