STOCKHOLM — Lydia Winters moved right here from Florida in 2011 for a dream job within the video gaming business: director of enjoyable for what now’s the phenomenally profitable sport Minecraft. By 2021, she had determined to tackle one other world additionally historically dominated by males: horology.
Her Instagram feed, @winters.watches, is in homage to her rising watch assortment and has greater than 8,900 followers. It combines her love of images — she as soon as was an expert photographer — with a ardour for watches.
“I thought: ‘I’m going to take photos that I haven’t seen around the watch community; photos that just feel very me,’” she mentioned throughout an interview that touched on her imaginative and prescient for the account, which options shut-ups of watches from her 18-piece assortment. “I wanted them to tell a story, and I wanted to take this approach of almost like it’s a person, it’s a portrait, but of a watch.”
She fashions among the watches herself, as if it have been a photograph shoot in a vogue journal, whereas different current photographs function the timepieces perched on volcanic rocks and nestled in Arctic moss, backgrounds she discovered throughout a visit to Iceland.
Ms. Winters, 34, now travels the world as chief storyteller, what she calls a kind of model evangelist for Minecraft, which is owned by the Swedish gaming firm Mojang Studios. The function finds Ms. Winters, who mentioned she was the primary girl and the primary expat to affix the corporate, interacting with among the greater than 141 million energetic gamers that the sport tallied in 2021.
She is also a part of a rising worldwide neighborhood of feminine watch fans utilizing social media to specific their love of horology — and doing so with out concern of being criticized, ridiculed or harassed.
“This last year in particular we have seen a huge shift because so many more women are joining the hobby,” Kat Shoulders, who, with Katlen Schmidt, hosts the Tennessee-based horology podcast Tenn & Two, wrote in an e-mail. “And I think we all can jump in and support each other in ways previously not available.
“We aren’t afraid to speak out either if someone, male or female, is being bullied or talked about inappropriately on social media,” she added.
Ms. Winters mentioned that touring extensively for her job has allowed her so as to add worldwide purchases to her watch assortment and to curate unique scenes for her pictures, which she takes utilizing both of her two Swedish Hasselblad medium-format digital cameras. (In February, the digicam producer named her certainly one of its Hasselblad Heroines, an award it bestows yearly on feminine photographers.)
She additionally makes use of the cameras to {photograph} watches on the residence she shares within the countryside close to Stockholm along with her associate, Vu Bui, Mojang’s chief content material officer, who is also a watch collector and photographer.
To accompany her images, Ms. Winters makes use of her iPhone to create tutorial photographs that reveal how she composed every shot. And she and Mr. Bui lately launched a YouTube channel, Winters & Bui, that delves additional into the artwork of watch images.
“The main goal of it all has been to be creative,” Ms. Winters mentioned. “And then to help inspire others in photography, which is why I shoot all the behind-the-scenes shots and post them with notes on how I did everything.”
She turned a real horology convert in 2013, she mentioned, when her Christmas present from Mr. Bui was what she considers her first “serious” watch: a Cartier Tank Solo in rose gold with a brown leather-based strap.
“Then it was like, ‘Now I understand why you wear a watch.’ I had worn fashion watches on and off, and my parents liked watches, so I’ve been watch-adjacent,” she mentioned. “But wearing the Cartier was like — wow, I really feel something when this is on me.”
“Growing up in Florida, my style was basketball shorts and T-shirts,” she mentioned. “And now I have this watch that’s so elegant and timeless, but also cool. And every time I put it on, I feel very privileged that I get to wear it.”
Ms. Winters thought the Cartier had happy her urge for food for luxurious timepieces, however quickly Mr. Bui was asking what her subsequent watch could be. The reply to that query got here a month later, when Ms. Winters purchased herself a Rolex Datejust.
Then, in spring 2020, as the 2 locked down firstly of the pandemic, Mr. Bui steered that she {photograph} her assortment, which had grown to incorporate a Tudor Mini-Sub bought for an earlier journey to Vietnam and an IWC Fliegerchronograph, purchased whereas visiting Tokyo.
At first, Ms. Winters rejected the concept, turning her digicam as an alternative to flowers within the lush environs of the couple’s residence — till winter got here and her topics died. It was then that she began aiming her Hasselblads at watches.
She additionally had began watching YouTube movies produced by the German horology fanatic Jenni Elle, and started corresponding with Ms. Shoulders and Ms. Schmidt, who then requested an interview for his or her podcast.
At that stage, Mr. Bui inspired Ms. Winters to transcend simply images by posting them on Instagram.
“When Tenn & Two reached out for her to be a guest on their podcast, I resumed my constant badgering,” he wrote in an e-mail. “I thought that if she was going to be introduced to the watch community on a podcast, there should be a place for people to find and interact with her.”
Ms. Winters began the account and mentioned she was shocked at how rapidly it amassed a following. She quickly discovered herself making dozens of recent watch-fan buddies and chatting in WhatsApp teams with lots of of feminine collectors and fans from around the globe.
The camaraderie got here as a pleasing shock — and a reduction. As a girl who has skilled discrimination within the gaming business, Ms. Winters mentioned she had anticipated to obtain sexist or discriminatory remarks within the feedback part of @winters.watches.
And whereas she acknowledged that she has skilled some chauvinism within the on-line watch world, she mentioned she felt snug and supported as a feminine social media influencer in a rising neighborhood of girls watch lovers.
“This isn’t watches 10 years ago, when there were probably just a few women around who had to pave the way, which is how I’ve felt in gaming,” she mentioned. “You feel like the community is large enough now. You can let your guard down.”
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