Marian

ERWhittington

Back from Norway! Can’t wait to show some results here ASAP. I think my record for ‘coldest I’ve ever been on a shoot’ has officially been broken. You can’t argue with arctic winds. But the midnight sun is so spectacular!

For now, in between booking trains, listening to Dolly Parton and planning shoots for tomorrow and beyond (I’ve got a commercial healthcare booking tomorrow; quite a change from nude mermaid-ing in Scandanavia!), here are some romantic, soft portraits taken recently by (not the) David Bailey. This was such a lovely shoot, with soooo many images. 🙂 I think they are almost a bit ‘bridal’; and we are well and truly into ‘wedding season’ after all! Some are edited a bit, some not.

Pink Venus

ERWhittington

You may have seen these popping up on my facebook profile, as photographer Samuel Somers has tagged me in a few… From a very productive, short shoot in Antwerp, Belgium (quick post as I’m rushing with last minute organisation for going to Norway tomorrow!):

A Rainbow

ERWhittington

Some unashamedly blissful, classical, romantic and girly images today, from my latest (lucky 13th!!) shoot with J H. J recently wrote a ‘retrospective’ feature about our history of shooting here, which was such a pleasure for me to read through. It’s really nice to shoot over and over again with the same people (and J is an absolute stellar fella), which is something that tends to happen a lot; I take it as a compliment that I must be doing something right, to be so frequently re-booked for various projects.

Our very first shoot, several million years ago, involved bluebells and so we thought it would be nice to shoot some again, in the exact same place (the woodland near where I live in Oxfordshire), but not before first seeing what we could do in one of the beautiful Oxford parks J had scouted the day before, having a boat ride along the river and stopping for hot chocolates/teas in between… I’m always very bossy (as anyone who’s shot with me will know; but only because I care!!), and demanded we also put a metaphorical middle finger up to those photographic gurus who think that rape fields are too cliched to be done well; and as I wrote on facebook around the time, if you’re bored of bluebells, you’re bored of life!!

J pointed out on the day that in this one shoot we pretty much covered a whole rainbow of colours, and what I love particularly about these images is how vibrant and sweet those colours are! It’s interesting to see J’s style changing, too, and I love the bokeh in these and some of the other shoots we’ve done recently (and the left hand side of the frame in the second image here is just beautiful in itself!!).

Without further ado:

(My favourite is the one under the willow tree.)

I had a brilliant time in Kent recently with friends; 17 girls in a huge house by the sea – what could go wrong? The weather was ridiculously beautiful and I am now completely in love with Margate (we went sea kayaking, had massages and danced until 4am in a funny little gay bar, having followed the sound of Michael Jackson and crashed what appeared to be, unreasonably given the music, a jive dance class). I’m keen to see more of Kent. I keep meaning to go there for a few photographers who’ve expressed interest in shooting me there, my only problem is finding the time. (Ah, the usual whinge!!). Seriously though, I had to smile at a recent spam message offering me opportunities to ‘work and travel!!!![sic]’ If there’s anything this job doesn’t lack, it’s travel – I’m going to Norway, Cornwall, Wales, Germany, Ireland, Portugal and Scotland all between now and September. 🙂

Catchlight in Belfast

ERWhittington

I had a really fun morning today in London at a costume fitting for a new pilot I’m going to be in. It’s by the people behind Breaking Bad and Mad Men (neither of which I’ve personally seen, because I am never on top of these things), and I was (hilariously) picked out specially to be in a particular scene. I suppose I’d better shut up there, as I’m not allowed to discuss anything, but anyway, I get to wear a beautiful dress. 🙂

In catch-up news, I really enjoyed a flying visit to Belfast in February, organised by the lovely and very talented Ross McKelvey, who I’d modelled for once before in Dublin and once at a Yerbury workshop. A two day booking at his studio (part workshop, part group thing) expanded into 4 separate shoots, and it went by in a bit of a blur! I definitely hope to return at some point. In the meantime, I’m probably coming to Cork in August, which should be really nice!

Here are a few images from Ross McKelvey, which I really like:


Hair and make up by Julia Clements:

(jpeg straight from camera:)
Hair and make up by Stephanie Burns:

(Hair and make up by me: a quick mess about!)

and one from Hugh Wilkinson (hair and make up by Julia Clements):

edit: and one from Stephen Bassett, which has already gone and got him a medal!

Electric blue, rain, shapes; workshop & London exhibition

ERWhittington

In stark contrast to the blog post below, I will leave it completely to you to imagine how this image was created. It’s a weird, freaky one – I love it!

(Taken by the ever-eccentric-in-a-good-way Eric Kellerman at a Dobbelmen workshop he and his colleague hosted, during my visit to the Netherlands last month. It was really fun to see what weird and wonderful shapes and patterns we could create!)
I had a really blissful time shooting in France recently (images on their way..!) and was picked up by a taxi, once back in London, to rush to the evening private view for a painter’s exhibition I am currently featured in. I felt very jet set and glam (in my rain-sodden hippie dress and wet feet…. Upon arriving in London, a man even took it upon himself to mention to me that my long dress was going to get wet at the bottom(!). Ha.) Anyway, it was fun to spot 4 new drawings of myself I’d never seen before (I’m rarely allowed to view the results in situ…) and I was struck, as always, by the immense talent and vision of the artist across the whole exhibition. It’s lovely (and unsurprising) to see that at least one piece I modelled for had sold already.
Right, over and out – just a quick update. Gallons and gallons of images to come very soon; I’m herding them up gratefully to show on here from the incredibly generous and creative types who have pointed their lenses at me in recent weeks…
Actually, in other, tentative, should-I-mention-this news, I’m working towards a poetry collection on the subject of appearance/reality/identity/performance. Same old preoccupation… But I’m gathering a significant section of thought on the concept of ‘muse-dom’. It’s a lot of fun. I would publish things here but then that would mess up copyright/permissions, etc etc. (That’s the annoying part.)

Into the Deep

ERWhittington

I absolutely loved working with Clayton Bastiani on the Isle of Wight earlier this year. He is just so incredibly creative and it’s really no wonder that his images have been published on hundreds of novel covers all over the world.

I was thrilled to be booked with the aim of producing a few more for his novel-cover stock (though we also did some different things as well). As someone who is rather fond of books and stories myself, I find it very exciting to be able to find myself on the front of another person’s story, representing some aspect of an imagined world – it’s a similarly wonderful feeling to know that a complete stranger has a portrait of you hanging in their house (or indeed, perhaps a bronze sculpture!) – really quite bizarre and odd (I always wonder what kind of person they are, and what it would be like to meet them and also how odd for them it might be to meet me). It will be interesting to see what stories out there will be matched up to my image, and why… Anyway, I’d better not get too ahead of myself, but I’ll update on here with any news down the line… 🙂

I’m allowed to show four individual images here on my blog, followed by a composite grid of some of the other images. It goes without saying but I’ll say it anyway: all images are strictly owned by Clayton Bastiani and may not be used/reproduced in any way without permission.

I should mention that Clayton wrote a ten-part series on photo creation and photo manipulation for Black & White Photography Magazine, the May edition of which featured the first mermaid image below. In the article Clayton explains all about how it was made, and you may be surprised to hear that I didn’t actually grow a tail especially for the purpose of the shoot (I suppose I’m just not that dedicated.. ;-))

Here’s a snippet of Clayton’s own words (from his facebook page), from when the magazine came out:

One of the driving forces behind many of my pictures is improvisation, finding ways to create images on a tight budget with minimum resources. This month I wanted to make a picture of a mermaid swimming in the murky depths of the sea.At the beginning of a recent shoot with Ella Rose I asked her to stand in the bay window and pretend to be swimming underwater. After the shoot I popped to the shops and bought a small fish tank and an assortment of plastic plants. Through trial and error and a little bit of torch light I spent a couple of days (in my usual to-ing and fro-ing manner) and created the following piece.


The Deep:



It’s always so kind of photographers to send prints to me after a shoot and I was really excited to receive an actual ‘moving image’ of this one; when you walk past it looks like I’m swimming in the reeds! Very magical! 🙂
Mermaid on Rocks:

Moon Dance:
Sword and Fire
And here’s a grid of a few more from the day:
A lot of the images above were created in the most unlikely set ups: a lot of hocus pocus went into them and so the results were such a fun surprise for me (even knowing what the intended outcomes were, via some pencil sketches!). 
You can look through more of Clayton’s work and purchase some prints of his fantasy and storytelling work from Stephen Bartels Gallery here.

Right, time for me to finish packing for France tomorrow!

Sunswept Sisters

ERWhittington

I’m a bit behind on updates here, sorry! (I’ve been slightly occupied with various modelling euro-jaunts, and then an amazing hen do, amongst other things.)

Catching up, catching up (in absolutely no particular order, as always)…

Here are some images taken by the ridiculously talented Mel Brackstone, who makes everything dreamy and amazing simply by virtue of pointing her lens at it.

The other model is the brilliant Anoush Anou.

(Infra…)

A sisterly-looking image of me on another day with lovely Ivory Flame:

And to finish is a bonus shot Mel took of me snapping those incredible Jacaranda trees. (I don’t normally wear quite so much tie-dye, but had just been picked up from Byron Bay, after all, so it was essentially decreed by law.)