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Tulips and Me!

ERWhittington 2 Comments

OK, supposed to be going out now and running late – I am so busy at the moment, and recent shoots have involved being up tree houses, riding a vintage sit-up-and-beg bicycle, posing in water, being a bride (today!), balancing in trees… I’m definitely feeling at the upper limit of my comfortable level of modelling busyness at the moment, with hardly a day off, but you’ll notice I remain a blogging addict. There are so many beautiful shots coming in my inbox – I love it! But yeah, I’m keeping this post briefer than planned.

On the way to my shoot with Jan Doef in Holland, my jaw dropped at these daffodil fields and Jan kindly suggested we pull over so I could take some photos! Sooooooooo beautiful!!! I’d never seen anything like this before.

Tulips:

Me:

 

I think Jan did a brilliant job on the black and white figure nudes in particular – luscious smooth lighting!

Over and out for now!

Lioness Lightplay

ERWhittington 1 Comment

This was such a fun shoot. Neil Snape‘s photography, specialising in fashion and beauty, is exquisite, and I admit I felt a bit nervous to be shooting with someone whose day job involves shooting world-renowned fashion models for world-renowned products and campaigns, but when in Paris…

Neil is so passionate and joyful about the possiblities of lighting in this mirror project, and was a delight to work with. He has since told me he is having trouble choosing final edits as they are all so special. *ego boost*!! Although a far cry from being a supermodel in height/measurements, apparently I’m alright… 😉 I’ve seen a couple more shots from this session already so far, but will post more another time, as soon as possible. Thanks Neil!

I just find this shot so stunning; the warmth and fiery glow, and the hunter pose…

Portraits, Box, Stripes and Lightning

ERWhittington 5 Comments
Tonight, a massive medley from the marvellous Eric Kellerman!
First, a test shot in (well, mostly out of by then) Eric’s robe, plus some portraity things: 

The infamous box – an honour to step in this small, equilateral theatre.

A beautiful bodyscape that seems to have slipped through the net of my previous post ‘Strength in the Dark’. Hip bone glory:

Then some joyful striping around. I love this effect – so amazing, especially when in the mix with some curly stray locks lolling around in front of flesh and playing shadow games.

(I think I manage to look a bit ‘eighties’, skeptical and sulky all at once in a few of those stripy portraits above. Brilliant!)

Thanks Eric! …And as always, if any of you readers have particular favourites, etc., do let me know! I always love to hear from you.
…So yeah, I know it’s totally inappropriate, but something about the stripes (and the fact that this particular fancy dress theme came up in conversation this evening when out with some friends) is making me want to leave you with some images from 2007 taken on a university pub crawl… We were the coolest kids in Nottingham that night, let me tell you. (There were seven of us and our feet were tied together for the majority of the night. Tricky manoeuvres all round.)

Hello Bowie friends, if any of you are reading this!

Paris by day ~ Travelogue!

ERWhittington 2 Comments

As promised in this Paris-by night post, the day-time evidence of recent Parisian frolics (with photographer J H) is here!

We went for a black-and-white colour scheme with a fashion travelogue feel; some posed scenes incorporating some recognisable sights plus some obligatory casual cafe breaks… Although a little cold at times (here’s hoping the June visit will be a little warmer!), we had a lot of fun wandering around and getting through our book of metro tickets, then setting me up to pose in front of such picturesque and famous skylines! I basically wandered around in an ‘I love Paris’ daze, I think, and enjoyed the sophisticated-to-playful outfits (I think it would have been a crime not to make the most of the merry-go-round when modelling in a short playsuit!).

Quai de la Tournelle:

Ile de la Cite et Ile Saint-Louis:

Le Jardin des Tuileries:

Some funky disco:

Trocadero:

And finally, the hotel rooms and my room’s balcony:

 

… Thanks again to J for such a fun and productive trip! 🙂

Swathes of Lavender

ERWhittington 5 Comments

Remember this post (‘Fertile Lands’), SEVEN months ago? Well it turns out that shortly afterwards, the wonderful Imagesse had sent me a whole other batch of images by email which I did not receive properly! If you are a friend of mine on facebook you will be aware of my recent horror at discovering that my smartphone has been displacing the occasional email at whim and deleting it from my inbox. I happened to come across a folder accessible only on my computer (and invisible on my phone) called ‘POP’, where hotmail keeps emails that have been deleted on ‘a device’ and which it wants me to check shouldn’t be kept. Clever hotmail. No fewer than 1174 emails over the last few months ago were found there lurking, unopened. Luckily, most of them were ones I had meant to delete from my phone, or else not important, but more than a very generous handful were very important, or sweet, or offering me highly-exciting work, and a few included images I had (seemingly rudely, I imagine) never seen or acknowledged! And there was me wondering why people hadn’t got back to me on one or two things!! Urgh. That was a stressful evening. Unfortunately I still need to be able to delete emails on my phone as I often make the most of spare minutes when out and about in order to keep the stream as clear as possible, but at least now I know to check my ‘POP’ folder (a bit like a ‘junk’ folder, but for non-junk that your computer doubts you meant to delete) for hidden jewels.

I’m on top of the problem now that I know about my phone’s mischievery, but hey – if someone doesn’t reply to your email, consider this post encouragement that a gentle nudge is sometimes necessary!! Technology, eh? Who’d have it?!

Without further to do, here are some beautiful (I think) images taken in a lavender field in Gloucestershire during summer last year. I think the colour is so eye catching and I haven’t seen (m)any images in this type of location before, so extra points to Perry for finding somewhere special! The flowers were so vibrant and fragrant. Modelling in places like these is so incredibly pleasurable – I’m not sure I would ever have visited a lavender field otherwise – I certainly hadn’t seen one before. Mmmm, lavender honey…. And I’m now remembering for the millionth time that I need to buy myself a new calming lavender rollerball fragrance bottle to take when travelling, since they are so relaxing (and mine ran out/leaked everywhere a few trips ago). Why is lavender so calming? I was having a similar thought recently when driving through countryside… Why do humans tend to find blue and green colours so relaxing (as opposed to, say, red or orange)? Why did God choose those colours to paint the majority of the world in? Did he want us to feel relaxed/peaceful/stop killing each other, etc..? Or do we feel relaxed because the natural world is blue-y green and we find nature relaxing? And then I thought I’m thinking an absolute load of nonsense, as really an object’s colour is only a secondary (not primary/essential) quality (as said philosopher John Locke), not independently objective… i.e. the colours of a lump of matter depends on the perceiver and context, like weight (where mass is fundamentally part of an object’s character) …but then maybe if we were designed to see something a certain way then the fact that we do is all that matters… Hhmmm. I’m awesome on car journeys… If I were the sort of person to write ‘dot com’ after words to emphasise my feelings, I would probably write ‘I miss studying at university dot com’.

Strength in the Dark

ERWhittington 5 Comments

How lovely ’twas to work with eccentric and passionate, Holland-based Brit Eric Kellerman, at his home studio in Nijmegen recently. We’d been in contact since 2009, according to our online message history (back when I was nervous about flying alone…. fast forward to now and I’m happily jetting about all over the world by myself!), and having been a long-time admirer of his beautiful and intriguing work, it was an honour to finally be involved in his vision. Eric has very kindly sent me some images after our shoot – 125 to be exact!! My inbox is happy. Eric is currently working on a number of different projects based on female figure nudes, the current accumulation of which can be seen on his website, gallery by gallery. Many of you will have heard of his infamous ‘box’ project and we did indeed work on that with some cool results (Eric is publishing a book on it later this year), but first, here are some strong, dark, moody nudes showing muscle and grit! I love these – a far cry from the softness I usually project.

Working with Eric is a liberating time as every strange ‘imperfection’ of the body is celebrated; although some shots may show bones, slenderness and strong definition in my abs, others show rolls of fat, bulges and creases which appear when the body moves, slumps and folds…. it’s all the same body on the same day (and my weight never fluctuates at all anyway) and just shows how variously a body can be portrayed, with the creation of different lighting, and to interesting visual effect.

I think my favourite is the fifth from the bottom… What do you think?

…More soon!

‘Mean Moody and Magnificent Muse in Montmartre at Midnight’ (post macaroon)

ERWhittington 11 Comments

(Blog title courtesy of photographer…:-))

Hello! I got back from my German/Dutch trip to Dusseldorf, Nijmegen and Amsterdam yesterday. It was a very productive time and I managed to sightsee a lot between appointments too! I enjoyed getting back to my german roots in Dusseldorf, and really really love Amsterdam in particular, where I spent a whole week dodging stag dos and taking roughly nine million snapshots of the unbelievably pretty canals, visiting the Van Gogh and Rijksmuseum, the tulip museum – very sweet; and I was lucky to be detoured by one photographer to see the vast swathes of rainbow tulips growing happily and stripily in a field on the way to a shoot – another photographer drove us via a windmill, so my dutch experience was complete! I also went to the Anne Frank House, which I found almost unbearably moving and heart breaking; I walked around on the verge of tears and in awe of what a wonderful man Otto Frank is/was. The literary talent of Anne Frank is amazing, too, and I wish we could have seen what she could have produced if she’d lasted just a few more weeks until liberation. Other highlights included the ‘Katten Kabinet’ – a canal house turned into a museum devoted solely to the depiction in art of cats throughout history. To top off that visual pleasure, asleep on the ticket desk as you enter lay a tabby, as though trained specifically for the purpose of easing the hearts of tourists missing their own animal kinds… This wonderful visit prompted my boyfriend to link me to this utterly brilliant video, featuring the hilarious french cat ‘Henri’ (full of ennui) considering the nature of his existence…. Watch it!

Modelling adventures on this trip included modelling in a box, in a cupboard, modelling with no limbs, modelling with two taxidermied ferrets (who I named Alexander and Margaret) and other such beauteous events, making for some interesting shots ranging from the very simple to the very quirky. I will be showing some images from the 12 days soon. But first…

I was lucky enough to be whisked away to Paris by J H last month. We’ve worked together many, many times now and had been thinking about working in Paris for a while. It’s really nice to be considered for such a trip – J has been inspired by  Parisian photography and I just absolutely love the place, and having worked together so often we knew it would work well. It’s a real compliment to be chosen for a big project, and a testament to the coolness of an ongoing and successful working relationship. 🙂

J cooked up a plan for french travelogue-style shots, some hotel-room lingerie and these shots below; loosely Brassai/Helmut Newton-inspired. In practise, modelling in such a very busy part of the city was not at all easy, and took a bit of bravery (and the ability to stay wrapped up warm until the very last second, then undress in a nano-second then shoot fast for 3/4 mins between the streams of couples casually strolling up and down the stairs), but we both think these shots are worth the effort! Jeremy did 99% of the styling for the trip, which consisted mostly of very elegant, chic and sophisticated clothing in black and white. Here I’m wearing a ‘halterneck skirt’, some wonderfully dangerous high heels, and a sheer body underneath, avec gloves. We used the lamplight, a limited pool of glow.

My favourites from this set – a brief part of the trip:

J’s decided he’d like to develop this particular theme (streets at night) with me in a couple of months when we will be re-visiting Paris (and checking out the current Helmut Newton exhibition) in part deux.

…And I’ll blog some shots we took during the day times very soon.