Haoming Wang was born in China in 1985. After living for five years in Singapore, Wang moved to Sydney, Australia, where he cultivated his love and passion for photography around the year 2007. Getting ahold of his first Leica was his first achievement, but some might argue that this witty photographer has worked his creative spirit and developed a keen eye for great product photography. Not surprisingly, his do-it-yourself techniques achieve great quality, light and composition, something most professional photographers only obtain after endless studio hours. Wang shares the process behind product photography with little to no professional lighting equipment. Just a tad of genius and a whole lot of creativity.

With some time in his hands, Wang oscillates from doing street photography and product photography. As many watch-fans should agree, the number of detailed engineering and manual labor invested in such astounding machines is worth taking documenting. Which is the main reason for Wang to select Leica as his go-to-camera for such detailed photography.

Most of the watches included in this project are luxury mechanical watches such as A. Lange& Söhne, Patek Philippe, ROLEX, Breguet, among others. The main objective behind this was to bring these products to an eye-candy, visual experience, where their luxury can be admired to the utmost detail. Wang says humbly: “All the watches are my friends’, I only own a Rolex. It’s not for business purposes, just for fun and exploration.”

Considering the high quality output of these pictures, one might feel inclined to question the process behind taking these pictures. Wang continues: “I didn’t spend any money for the professional lighting, I only had a Leica SF 58 flash, but never used on product photography.”

© Haoming Wang

When Wang explained his creative approach when taking these pictures, he refers to the above image, where he admits that using the Macbook screen was “accidental”. He shares details about the finding: “Using the screen is accidental. A few years ago, I was sitting in front of my laptop to look at my watch and I noticed the watch looked different when near or far away from the screen. I tried to push the watch close to the brightest side of the screen and the watch looks very different than in ordinary, natural light. After that, I used my camera to photograph it, and got some very different photos.”

© Haoming Wang
Wang used the Leica M (Typ 240) adapter Leitz Macor-Elmarit-R 1:2.8/60 with a polarization filter, with a Leica M Macro adapter between camera and R adapter.

Looking closely at the pictures, you begin to understand the implicit characteristics of the tools used to create them. The background for some of the shots is a black sponge mat, where Wang puts the watch on the sponge mat, set up the Macbook screen to white with bright light. Since the watch is made of metal, reflection is higher than sponge mats and the polarizer can eliminate a good reflection on the part of the sponge mat.

To know more about Wang’s work, please follow him on Flickr and Pinterest.