Making Time in the Most Historic Place in Lincoln: Personal Branding Photography with Pinchbeck Watches
Brand and product photography for independent makers · Lincoln · Lincolnshire
“Clare, just wanted to drop you a message to say WOWEE the photos you have done for Pinchbeck are amazing!!! Honestly, thank you so much for all your work on them. The images are stunning and we are thrilled with them!”
There are shoots where you turn up to a nice space with good light and get great images.
And then there are shoots where you walk through a hidden wooden door in a medieval archway, climb the tightest spiral staircase of your life with a camera bag that absolutely does not fit, emerge at the top into a studio with leaded arched windows overlooking Lincoln Cathedral on one side and the castle square on the other and think I cannot believe this is a real place where real people actually work.
Pinchbeck Watches was the latter. A hidden gem in every sense.
If you haven't heard of Pinchbeck Watches, you're not alone and that was part of the problem their original website hadn't done nearly enough to solve. Because this isn't just another watch brand. This is a small, passionate, family connected team of four people, hand making beautiful timepieces to order in one of the most extraordinary workspaces in Lincoln. Each watch is crafted collaboratively. Each one is made from scratch. Each one is, quietly, a work of art.
The original website didn't tell that story. It looked like any other watch site. And for a brand this rich, human, this rooted in craft and place and heritage, that simply wasn't good enough.
So the brilliant team at Number 75 Design brought me in to help fix it. The brief was to capture everything the website had been missing: the people, the process, the tools, the space and the soul behind the brand. A full suite of images for the new website and their social media: consistent, high-end, but warm. Craft, not corporate.
The team
Let me introduce you to the four people behind Pinchbeck Watches, because honestly their story is as beautiful as the watches themselves.
Paul Pinchbeck is one of the founding family owners, his name is literally on the brand, and that means something. Jason is the watch designer, the creative mind who conceives each piece from scratch. Rob is the watchmaker, the person whose hands actually bring those designs to life in metal and glass and the most extraordinarily tiny components you've ever seen up close.
And Emily is the marketing and social media powerhouse who keeps everything moving and, I can confirm, had the studio looking absolutely immaculate for our shoot. (Emily & Rob are also married, which makes this even more of a love story)
Four people. A handful of beautiful watches made each year. One of the most special workspaces I've ever stepped inside.
The studio
I need to talk about the studio.
You'd walk straight past it if you didn't know where to look. A small wooden door, set into the archway of the Bailgate in Lincoln, one of the most historic corners of an already deeply historic city. Through the door, up a steep metal spiral staircase (I genuinely do not know how they got the furniture up there, I nearly didn't make it with my camera bag), and you arrive at the top into this extraordinary history filled space.
Leaded arched windows on both sides. The castle square on one. Lincoln Cathedral, right there, filling the other. A studio that feels, as I kept thinking while I was there, older than time and in it, four people quietly making it.
Emily had filled the space with beautiful vintage pieces: maps, architectural drawings, paint chips, artwork, textures everywhere. The kind of working environment that tells you everything about the people in it before they've said a single word.
The shoot
We started where the story starts in the studio itself, the leaded windows, the character of the room, the atmosphere before moving into the work itself.
Then came the detail shots, and these are some of my absolute favourites from the whole shoot. We photographed Jason designing at his desk, the slight beautiful juxtaposition of modern technology being used to create something so rooted in heritage and craft. And the close up shots of the watch components: the cogs, the tiny interlocking pieces that measure out time are like miniature works of art. Each one a different colour, intricate beyond belief. I could have photographed them for hours.
Outside into the Bailgate
From the studio, we took everyone outside into the Bailgate for the group shots and portraits and this is where something shifted.
I didn't want posed, corporate headshots. I asked them to stand and sit and just talk to each other. And as they relaxed and forgot about the camera and started being themselves, that's where the best images came from. The people who sit back and listen, the ones who get animated and use their hands, the quiet smiles. The married couple who've built something together. Those candid, conversational portraits are the ones that bring a brand to life in a way no amount of careful posing ever could.
Back inside, the team at work
Then we headed back up that spiral staircase for the final part of the day, capturing the team working together in the studio. The collaborative buzz of four people who genuinely love what they make. Rob at the bench, Jason at the desk, Emily keeping everything moving. The energy of a small team doing something they believe in, in a space that feels made for exactly this purpose.
One image I'm particularly proud of came from this part of the day: Emily, moving through the stone staircase that leads from the workspace up to the roof of the archway, captured in intentional motion blur. My idea for that shot was about conveying movement through time, here she is, in this ancient staircase, going somewhere. I love what it became.
A small moment that meant a lot
One of the watch faces features original artwork by Lincoln artist Dominic Parczuk and when I saw the painting in person during the shoot, I had a little moment. I first spotted Dominic's work in the Lincoln Cathedral café when I'd not long moved to the city, spent ages trying to figure out who'd painted it, and have followed him ever since. To have his work turn up inside a watch, inside a shoot, inside a hidden studio overlooking the cathedral where I first found him, well. Lincoln is a small city and I love it for exactly that reason.
Hello Dominic, if you're reading this. I love your work.
The result
The team were, I'm very happy to say, bowled over by the images. And they deserve to be, because this is a brand that has always been extraordinary, it just needed the visuals to match.
If you're an independent maker, craftsperson or heritage brand in Lincoln or Lincolnshire with a story that your current visuals simply aren't telling, I'd genuinely love to help you fix that.