English Rose

Paint, Feet, Magalazine Cover!

ERWhittington 3 Comments
Sorry for being a bit quiet – things are a bit crazy in my personal world at the moment with a massive upheaval caused by having to very reluctantly remove myself from a situation I’ve been in for 8-and-a-bit years (my entire adult life thus far), and I think I need to clamp my head together to keep all my thoughts from spinning off in different directions. Incredibly annoying to find that I can’t harness myself into writing at the moment, having put aside time especially; seems I’m best at writing when things are peaceful, not dramatic, and otherwise I have the attention span of a self-doubting, mourning-for-something-that-seems-only-to-have-existed-in-my-head-anyway hamster. 
To ‘make up’ for this, I have been buying myself jewellery and being frivolous; spending more on one piece (vintage, rubies, pearls; rose gold being my weakness) than I ever have before. I really want to buy myself a ring next, but we shall see (and currently the ring I want does not exist). I actually rang my Mum from the shop (a little place in Oxford which makes me very happy) for reassurance, asking if I was mad to be spending so much on the very opposite of what I’d gone in for (I went in hoping to find a silver/white gold SIMPLE pendant), and she said it was fine… haha… and that at the very least, gold was an investment… (And I remember my old painter friend telling me gold was the way forward, not that I’ll be buying any big chunks any time soon!!) so obviously my little burst of jewellery buying was highly rational and clever… Jewellery has always been very meaningful and emotionally important for me, especially when either inherited, or ‘worn before’… or bought for me… or bought as a gift for myself… who am I kidding – I just love it. And I don’t really shop very often. (There I go again attempting to justify my splurge!).
Anyway, this is my personal blog, so I can write what I want, but while the urge to express upset and rantings is one I can definitely identify with, I always find it a bit of a shame when people bare their souls online/on facebook etc rather than among friends in person. So, here are some updates I should have posted a while ago, from my ‘to blog’ folder.
First, a painting by Kristian Mumford, recently shown at the Loreto Art Exhibition, 113×78 oil on linen (courtesy of John Evans, who photographed the original image in a crumbling mansion): 

By Holly at Jewelled World, yet another book cover featuring… well, my feet again. Haha. It amuses me greatly that my little tattoo seems not to have been edited out by the relevant department at the publishing house; the absolute testament to the fact that no one ever notices it. I will have to see this in real life to be sure. Well done Holly!

Finally, my mug on the cover of Digital Camera Magazine recently, shot by a competition-winning reader up in Manchester. We had a great day; there were lots of sets and beautiful images made that I really wish I could have seen finished versions of after the shoot, but trust me that there were some absolute beauties! My hair and make up was stunning, I thought, and done by Zan, who was excellent!

I’ve also been told I’m featured in a book out at the moment, ‘Practical Photoshop: Creative Projects’. Someone spotted it in WHSmith for me (thank you!), so I emailed the editor and he’s kindly sending me a copy. I’ve got some lovely shots in waiting which I’ll be excited to show soon, but bear with me if I do disappear for a little while. Thanks for reading!

Criatura

ERWhittington 3 Comments

I’ve been reading an amazing book recently; one I picked up in a hostel in Costa Rica at the very end of my Central America trip last year, then put back on the bookshelf as it was too thick to carry home (my backpack was 100% full of things collected over the course of 2.5 months; souvenirs, textiles and the most beautiful hammock you’ll ever see (and which I haven’t seen in a while, since England is not the ideal hamaca-hanging arena).

I spend an indecent amount of time on amazon.co.uk, buying new CDs most weeks and occasionally treating myself to new books too… and I bounced through ‘recommendations’ a few weeks ago until the same book caught my eye again. And it could get to me without me carrying it!

I will admit that one of the reasons I initially was drawn to this book in San Jose was the cover. I think the most discerning readers always judge a book by its cover… And I have always been drawn to wolves. Here it is:

‘Women who Run with the Wolves: Contacting the power of the wild woman’, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

Unknown to me at the time, this is apparently a real classic, a bit like ‘The Artist’s Way’ and all that other good stuff. I’m learning a lot from it, and it’s also interesting to consider it in the context of my modelling work (tenuous link ahoy!!). My images often portray what I’m told is a very feminine, soft and sensual ‘prettiness’, and this book explores the other side of that womanly coin; the intuition, power, primal animal attributes and wisdom of women. When you’re feeling a bit too simpering and primped, it’s a good slap in the face. Women should be strong, powerful and deeply creative, not overly passive, girlish and naive; they are deeply knowing, instinctive and in touch with the vital, if they let themselves be.

I’m about a third of the way through, but I’m finding the author’s writing style so beautiful and poetic; so mad, funny and academic all at once. So this is a big fat recommendation. She weaves mythological fairy tales and folklore from all over the world with psychoanalysis and explorations of the unconscious, paradigms, roles and archetypes that can help us know what to do and who is who and who has what intention… and how to stay true to yourself. Cool huh?

I love a word which comes up frequently in the book: ‘criatura’ (creature). I think the following shots compliment the theme, being quite different from straightforward ‘pretty’ or ‘perfect’ representations of femininity, so they are well worth an appearance on my blog; they show flesh and bone, the workings of the body, and are real and mysterious at once. I also think they are beautifully lit, which never hurts. 🙂

By Shane Lewis, shot in Dublin:

On another bookish note, what an amazing idea this is, at a time when libraries here in England are dying/being closed due to cuts and land-line public phones aren’t really very necessary. Apparently these book exchanges are cropping up in rural villages; I imagine my American followers will find this very quaint. 😉

And, I’ve got the guilts about updating this blog, etc., when I still have lots of emails to catch up on. I am getting to them ASAP. Sorry.

Red jellyfish & Black Tutus

ERWhittington 2 Comments

Evening! I’m back in England, where a bikini doth not an outfit make.

I’ve just had a really lazy summer holiday in my parents’ apartment in the south of Spain, where temperatures were, of course, predictably and gloriously HOT, the outdoor pool glitters in the sunlight and makes the perfect arena for weird and watery races and acrobatics (I rarely actually swim), floaty dresses were reluctantly donned to walk around unbelievably beautiful white mountain-backed villages, and hazy sunsets and star-filled nights were the rule. I am so lucky to have that little part of the world to escape to!

(Although, shock horror: I got stung by a jellyfish!!! I couldn’t believe it!! My boyfriend spotted a couple of these small red, alien floaty creatures bobbing around and swam a little way towards them to peer at them, delighted (BOYS!!!). I, cleverly, backed away, only to be lanced in the ankle by one floating around behind me!! It hurt SO much!! I really panicked, as I’ve been to Spain many times but never seen or experienced this there, and I have no real ‘jellyfish knowledge’ (other than on the east coast of Australia, where jellyfish = bad) and didn’t know if it was a serious situation or not… And does ‘red’ not equal ‘I will poison you’ in nature?…

…All this panic was going through my head while my ankle began to feel stiff and swollen, I felt all wobbly, and the pain kept shooting through me over and over again. I think my loud English swearing caused a bit of fuss, so the water quickly cleared, and then was slowly filled up by gallant men with fishing nets, who seemed determined to empty the sea of all possible jellyfish and display them on hot rocks on the beach. Urgh. Anyway, it was all fine, I didn’t die, and my red double-tentacle swipe tattoo has now mostly disappeared completely.

By the way, it was a nudist beach. (Well, tan lines are disallowed in this career, are they not?) Yes, the swimmers absconded quite quickly.

*Sorry to all the people who’ve emailed me over the last couple of weeks* – I allowed myself hardly any internet time while on holiday (there is none in the apartment), but I will be replying to all messages soon now! It’s good and healthy to have time separated from the world of online activity, but it’s been so nice to catch up today on all the many and varied blogs I follow. I’m also planning a few new things and projects to get started with (or wrap up) over the next few weeks – don’t you just love that fresh perspective and buzz you get about your home life after ever just a short time away?

***********

I had a really fun and productive shoot with Richard Spurdens last month, a long-awaited second shoot, while on my trip to Stockport, and the following images have kindly arrived in my inbox, made at Hallam Mill Studios. We shot quite a few different styles, and I think there are many more ideas in the planning.

I have many more photos lined up to show here, as always, including some I love and should have posted weeks ago, and get so excited by seeing the results from the shoots I’ve done! Stay tuned! …And it’s always nice to hear which shots stand out most to my blog readers, so do speak up if you feel the urge! 🙂

My newest black tutu, with my lingerie leotard and pointes:

Stylised portraits:

Shot from above, making the most of a floor:

A new blue skirt I love, and window stories:

Some posing around:

🙂

Lions, Points and Window light

ERWhittington 4 Comments

After a challenging and rewarding couple of days of modelling in the very beautiful part of the world that is Pembrokeshire (during which I saw an otter swimming around between lily pads in a lake I was modelling in – more on that another time – and decided I want to have a statue of a reclining lion on top of my dream future house, inspired by a pub we passed in one of the village/towns), I got home and spent the day before yesterday shifting and lifting furniture around with the aim of putting my writing desk in a south-facing room (it is utterly miserable and dark otherwise, and now that I’ve graduated from just typing on my laptop while lying on my bed to having an actual desk, I’ve decided to go the whole way and validate the whole thing with thoughtful arrangements!) This desk-moving ritual marks the beginning of a new era for me, in which I will for the next two months be taking my novel-writing more seriously again and sacrificing photoshoot fun (and also money) by not modelling in August and September, except for maybe a few very local afternoon bookings. I have to do this because I will be away travelling for modelling assignments for much of autumn and will hate myself if this novel’s first draft is unfinished (or at least not very nearly finished) by the end of the year.

I’m also doing an online course at the moment, and I’ve had a brilliant few months of being extremely busy, modelling wise, so now it’s time to switch things around and take control of what I want to achieve for a while! (And obviously the location of the desk was the only thing stopping me from multi-million pound literary success…) Yesterday, 1st of August, in my black-and-white jazzy geometric pyjama-style trousers from Mexico, I made a good start, and have also been discovering my exercise bike (picked up a while ago from the front lawn of a neighbour – with permission…), marvelling about my new exercise regime (bike plus yoga plus walks/runs) which will have me bikini ready for my holiday in Spain, and generally just looking forward. I’m also thinking of finding a new evening class to meet some new people (since so few of my friends actually live nearby now), plus trying a few new dance classes I’ve found… I love making changes!

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In other news, here’s something the brilliant Gregory Brown wrote about the Faerie Garden print book I put together recently: ‘Ella Rose – a very fine model – has created a book of pictures by many different photographers. The book is called Faerie Garden. I am happy to have a couple of my photographs featured in this book. The pictures I took of Ella Rose were shot in Nerja, southern Spain last year. More of our photographs from that trip can be seen in this gallery.’

Sean Buckley also wrote this, and it’s really nice to know how pleased these kind photographers are to be featured in this way!

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After what feels like a million years of threatening to visit the Manchester/Stockport area but never quite fitting it in, I had two trips recently – one for a commercial booking (a publication feature will probably follow on this blog at some point – thanks to those who have spotted me on various things!) and one for a two-day visit to Hallam Mill Studio in Stockport, of natural-light fame. 🙂 I had a great time there, and my first booking was with Nige, whose initiative-taking was stellar (in deciding it was time I visited and setting things in motion rather than just vaguely always saying ‘whenever you’re in the area….’ – seriously photographers, this kind of solid booking is so appreciated; I wish people would do it more as it really makes life easier for models!).

We had a great shoot, although the light was in and out, in and out… that old game which makes it a bit tricky getting camera settings right for more than about one second at a time… Anyway, Nige has been extremely kind and sent me lots of images from the day, and I think there are lots of lovely ones here, especially the ones in front of the window, with the faded, washed-out ethereal feel. I don’t pretend to be trained to dance en pointe or to have perfect technique (I’m going for a contemporary mash up instead really…). Although we were all pretty convinced I would be a ballerina when I was young and I did reach the highest grade, I finished studying ballet seriously before I was old enough to train en pointe (I moved house, left my brilliant dance school and, to be honest, got a bit distracted by things I found more fun and more ‘free’/less stilted… and then my genetic ‘child-bearing’ hips grew to insane proportions, of course, and all ballet hopes would have been dashed beyond my control anyway, had I still been interested in pursuing that side of dance), so I’m very much just experimenting CAREFULLY with pointe-work as I go, bearing in mind the principles I did learn during my time of studying ballet… taking it gently and just playing about for photoshoots), but I do find the style so pretty and dreamy and hopefully just about pull it off for a balletic-ish feel.

So here are some shots from Nige…

 

…Any favourites?

Also, I definitely can’t resist adding this unedited outtake from a catologue-style fashion set we did, where the top Nige had brought along was unfortunately far too big and blew out a bit at the front in a mightily bulbous kind of way…. This is definitely what I will look like preggers. Can’t wait! (Well, I definitely can wait – but you know what I mean!). Haha!

Colouroids

ERWhittington

It was so nice to be asked to work with Steven Billups again recently, while he was over from the US visiting family in Germany. I got to explore the Black Forest amongst other locations, which was just the kind of location where every frame would have been beautiful – streams, waterfalls, rock formations, mossy stones… it had the lot – my kind of shooting paradise! (I did get bitten by a chihuahua during a break, though, which was a bit of a shock – we’d had to stop for a while as the chihuaua and two human friends decided to set up a picnic right by where we shooting –  until then we’d managed to avoid the troops of German school children frolicking around on nature trips – so obviously I attempted to befriend the little cutie like a mad (dogsick) lady… BAD idea. Lesson learnt. Do not approach strangers’ dogs, however fluffy.)

Anyway, one of the highlights of the trip was spotting a field full of luscious tall, yellow, happy sunflowers just off the side of a road… so we had to shoot there. I’ve been sent some colour polaroids already from what we did there (they’ve had no tone or contrast adjustments), and also a few from an old castle ruin we worked at on the first day and from the Black Forest on the second day, with the processed film shots to come soon. Colour polaroid is so magical. It works so well for a 70s hippie sunflower feel particularly in the first two shots, I reckon, and looks kinda mystical and pretty by the castle, with the pink orbs of light! The ones in the Black Forest came out really strange and dreamy… Watching these develop was very exciting!

We thought we’d drop a poloroid into the 50-cent honesty box by the sunflower field (you can chop off a flower to keep, with the yellow knives which are provided), and maybe make the local German paper, guerilla flower-flasher style… but we had a bit of trouble choosing one we’d be happy to lose, so it remained just an amusing idea…

Hope you like these!! I love them!

P.S. Here is a chihuahua apologetic; never-bitten-anyone-in-her-life, little darling Lulu Lambambi. She comes for runs with me.

Bedroom Glamour

ERWhittington 12 Comments

Sorry for letting that last post run a while, but in between a brilliant trip to Germany’s Black Forest as well as a great little trip to the Manchester/Stockport area, I wanted to allow the news of the new book to take precedence for a while here in my little online space. 🙂 However, my desktop is BURSTING with new images from various people which I can’t wait to show on here, so… onwards!

It was lovely to hear from Tony Ornstien, a photographer I have worked with quite a few times but hadn’t seen in a while, a few weeks ago and recently I went over to his and his wife Jennifer’s wonderful, mad house (it is crammed with enormous, intriguing art, and built like a ‘train carriage’, which means you walk through a seemingly endless stream of differently-styled rooms all in one direction). I was booked for another dose of photography, since Jennifer requested some new art for their walls. It’s always fun to work with this duo, and Tony wanted to create some natural, intimate, relaxed, elegant bedroom (‘boudoir’, maybe) scenes. This style is intimate, and somehow classical and retro at once, and the atmostphere is vaguely similar to the image I have down the side of my blog here, ‘Bis’ by Pamela Hanson, which I (obviously) love. Liberated and friendly and natural. We found that the trick was to act, move and actually perform the particular movements or mini-narratives, rather than pose stiffly in a scene, and there was a lot of silliness involved.

The final set was the ultimate in multi-tasking at the end of a shoot; clearing up my things and modelling at the same time… 🙂 I am pleased with many of these (and there are a lot of shots – trying to decide on one or two favourites for my website!) and I hope to visit Tony and Jennifer again sometime soon!

P.S. To the person/bot who keeps trying to spam my old posts with vacuous automated comments about how ‘informative’ and ‘well put together’ my content is, and then suggesting I take a look at their loans website, please kindly fuck off. If you knew how strongly I felt about people who make money through interest, you’d understand how liberally I am deleting your ridiculous attempts to advertise your probably-virus-filled evil website through my ART blog.

Public Service Announcement: a Book!

ERWhittington 1 Comment

I’m so excited to have in my hands the fruit of several months’ coordination and the physical result of some extremely generous and kind photographers. I’m holding (well, not while typing, I suppose, but it’s here on my desk) a collection of some of my favourite images taken over the last three years, during which I’ve been practising my happy deviation into a life of art modelling.

I’ve mentioned before that I thought it was sad not to have many actual prints to show for my hard work, unlikely adventures and gloriously fun modelling frolics so far, and that computer files didn’t really cut it; and that I had decided to put together a photography book for myself to look at when I’m old (or anytime between now and then…). I’ve now managed to finish this project.

The book focuses on just one theme; it uses shots from one of my twelve website galleries, ‘Faerie’, and collects 29 natural, gentle, romantic and pure shots of me as the nude, female figure in a loose ‘garden’ setting; in tall grass, entwined in trees, in pools of water, surrounded by flowers, in faerie queen headdresses, in pre-Raphaelite forest guises, in the cool, shady dappled light of Mediterranean gardens and against huge, jurassic plants. I’ve never made a book before, so this is a great feeling, and just so wonderful to be able to own!

I’m so grateful to the photographers whose images are printed in this book, and although this was definitely created just as an indulgence for myself, as something to keep, I do have permission to make this book available for others to purchase. If anyone would like to buy themselves a copy, some money from each book bought goes to Amnesty. If you agree with me that physical prints are sooo much more satisfying to look at than online virtual ones, and you like the idea of owning a version yourself, having it adorn your bookshelf and perhaps provide some visual and artistic inspiration, you’re welcome to preview it online and see what you think.

Huge thanks to the following. Click on the links below to see more of their work:
Rebecca Parker
John Evans
Paul Bartholomew
Rayment Kirby
Voyages2004
J H
DB Images
Dave Aharonian
Keith Cooper (website pending)
Imagesse
Robert Farnham
Gregory Brown
Michael Cordiez
Sean Buckley
and Pat Brennan

…I hope you like it. I’m so glad I finally did this and am already thinking of making a second book sometime in the not-too-distant future… Just need to choose a gallery/theme and start to gather my favourites!