Koda Photography In Watches. What Is It And Why Should You Care
The 2nd instalment of the OxWatch mailing list brings you an introduction to the Koda Watch Photography Movement.
Hey team,
Thanks for reading and sharing the last newsletter. Today we’ve got an intro to the Koda watch photography movement, describing the key principles.
Pre-empting the response from a certain @edinbrughtimepieces this isn’t my opinion just an intro. We’ll get into what I actually think next time.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy :))
Also, apologise for no images from photographers who shoot in the Koda style. I didn’t want to plagiarise anyone and didn’t have time to ask for image rights before writing lol.
Koda Photography In Watches. What Is It And Why Should You Care
In case you haven’t noticed on watch Instagram recently. There are a lot of people taking photos in the same style.
Praise has floated around recently since an opinion piece was published on Mainspring defining the style and giving it a name. I’m inclined to agree this article is an opinion piece and I appreciate the many hours of research that must’ve gone into writing it. Still, I believe rather than accepting this piece as a truth in the same way other enthusiasts have, there should be some discourse over how accurate it is to categorise watch photography with a title and into buckets.
That said, here’s an outline of the main features of the Koda watch photography movement. We’ll leave the debate about accuracy for another article.
It’s all about lifestyle
Koda photography is all about the watch in the real world on real wrists.
It’s about living and documenting the life we imagine our watches having. Think climbing a mountain with your Rolex Explorer, swimming in the sea with your Seiko SPB143 (I’m looking at @bowlofsalmon here). All images of the watch on a wrist in its natural habitat.
You’ll be hard-pressed to find a photo in the Koda style that doesn’t feature a wrist.
It’s all about lighting
The tone and mood created by lighting is another main feature of the Koda style.
Lighting is soft, often because of overcast weather. Overcast weather isn’t a limiting factor as photos shot at both sunrise and sunset in harsh, golden lighting conditions are often considered in the Koda style. The overarching lighting principle is a faded shot that has a similar texture to a print in a magazine on matte paper.
It’s soft. In a faded way.
It’s sometimes about colour
It’s not just faded colours.
Warm rich colours that are faded. White balance can be in the blue, but we still feel those warm tones underneath. It’s kind of contradictory, but you know it when you see it.
At least that’s what the article cited describes.
Next time, we’ll discuss why Koda photography isn’t really a thing.