Outdoor Location

Underwater Fires

ERWhittington 3 Comments

I have so many images queuing up to be shown here as always but am interrupting that flow with some excitement caused by this morning’s inbox arrival – some underwater adventuring shot in California by Zoe Wiseman.

I loooove these. Wow!!! Thanks Zoe!

I think I may have referred to this shoot already on here, mentioning that it was a fun challenge – my first underwater shoot. Meghan Claire (who features alongside me in most; we were also joined by Carlotta Champagne and Titania) was great at pulling me down, as I have the world’s most buoyant butt, I think. The flowy hair and dreaminess of these, with the bubbles everywhere and upward reflections, and the light daggering and darting down through the water in ripples just makes these so amazing. I think my favourites are the ones in colour, and I also love the chaotic group shots at the end, with limbs and torsos all entwined at different depths and distances from the camera, with magical creatures falling beautifully in the foreground and far away mermaids swimming past alongside…. 🙂 I so want to try some more!

I’d love to hear your favourites!

Otters, Rocks and Water Lilies

ERWhittington 4 Comments

Just in case you don’t notice, I’ve now re-jiggled my blog here to have its very own stand-alone ‘Travel Plans, Schedule & Events’ page (see the new tab at the top!). Pretty snazzy, eh? I’ll be attempting to keep it regularly updated with dates and locations, so it’s the place to glance at now and then if you ever find yourself wondering about my wanderings.

I’ve also added a widget on the right hand side which enables you lovely readers to enter your email address into the box to get immediate notifications directly to your inbox every time I update this blog with news and new images. You might find you like it. (And if not, you can unsubscribe at any time.) Do it! 🙂

*****

At the end of July I went on another two-day adventure with Perry (Imagesse) to Pembrokeshire in Wales. I annoyed myself throughout the trip by having a cold which meant I couldn’t breathe amazingly well (urgh), but apart from that it was another very enjoyable adventure! I had my own beautiful little self-catering converted barn in Lamphey, so that was a nice treat (although I vaguely remember demanding that Perry remove a spider from my bathroom shortly after arrival. I am such a girl, it’s embarrassing).

We visited various locations which Perry had thought looked interesting, and as usual there were some beautiful and striking scenes involved. Sometimes a shoot is a bit like a nature-spotting hiking trip in disguise. 🙂 With thanks to Perry (and hoping to shoot again sometime!), here are a few of the results:

With my dance wings let loose like a cape…

In a tiny old chapel set in a cliff:

Down near the water…

And in a huge lake filled with beautiful water lilies. It was quite difficult to find a spot to photograph here, as to be honest, the lake wasn’t exactly very private, but we took the risk… I love the inky hues of Perry’s mono conversions here, but will also add a couple in colour to show off the amazing vibrant blues and greens!

And of course, I promised otters. Well, aside from joggers of the picturesque-location penchantery, this location was also a hit with otter-spotters. One poor man told us all about his efforts to witness their existence, with little success, before moving on. Around three minutes later, we saw one repeatedly popping its little brown head up before swimming around to a slightly different part of the water, sending ripples and bubbles everywhere and popping up again… We were totally spoiled with otter omnipresence! So obviously Perry grabbed a quick snapshot or two (though he hadn’t got the most appropriate otter-watching lens on at the time!):

Cuuuuute! I really hope the man we spoke to saw one or two before he went home.

I love my job.

Beetroot and Rocks

ERWhittington 2 Comments

It is completely and utterly unnecessary, not to mention irrelevant to the purposes of this blog, to let you know what I had for dinner this evening, but I think what I just made needs to go down in history.

Beetroot, walnut and goats cheese spelt risotto.

Method:
– One onion (or a few shallots) in butter in big shallow pan
– Add garlic
– Two chopped cooked beetroots
– One courgette
– Handful of walnuts
– 100g wholegrain spelt (serves 2)
– Sizzle briefly (that’s the food, not the cook, though I was wearing an indecent amount of glamorous eye make up from today’s shoot)
– Add about 450ml of vegetable stock, and a splash of white wine for luck
– boil/simmer until the spelt absorbs most of the water
– grate in hard goats cheese
– Inhale gorgeousness
– Grind in a load of black pepper
– Admire the bright pink concoction as it bubbles away
– When liquid is absorbed, serve into shallow bowls and top with a handful of fresh watercress.

Delicious.

In other news, I’m happy to say I’ll be modelling for the Yerburys at the SWPP Photographic Convention in January (8th-14th at the Hilton at Edgware, London), for their two ‘Superclasses’, ‘Boudoir to Nude’, which has just three places left (on Tues 8th) and a portraits/creative lighting class (on the 11th) which has already sold out. It’ll be my first time there, and I’m sure will be a lot of fun! Maybe see some of you there, so come and say hi!

And finally, here are some shots made by the very lovely Bob Freund, taken in the stunning, surreal, wonderfully spiky Joshua Tree National Park in California. I spotted a coyote there one day (I was lucky enough to go there several times in the course of a week) and spent one evening lying against rocks in the dark watching the amazing star-ful sky! Very very peaceful and eerie. Bob found a particular spot in the park that he’d been searching for years, since photographing it once and wanting to go back; that’s not an easy feat, when the park is so huge, and required an initial detour to a patch of deceptively beautiful, violent cacti. Luckily, they didn’t get us! Thanks Bob!

Solarised

ERWhittington 2 Comments

Hoping the East Coasters are doing OK. Horrible time for all concerned. Wishing you light, heat and power!!

And here are some polaroids from the wonderful woman that is Zoe Wiseman. Zoe is so brilliant to work with – utterly laid back (we’d pause after every single shot to pull out the image, dip it in the bucket… and get excited each time, so it was a very leisurely pace… and cooling off in the swimming pool became the shoot itself!) but happy to direct too, and always has the models’ best interests at heart, which doesn’t go unnoticed. Half of the roll was of me and half of the very beautiful Meghan (in last shot), who will soon feature here more I’m sure as we also spent a whole load of time shooting together again, including UNDERWATER – that was a really fun challenge for me, and hopefully the images will be very special! We will have to see how the film comes out! Oh, the suspense!

Anyway, I love these! Some are (semi?) solarised, for an extra layer of coolness. Zoe was using a Holga with a Polaroid Back (polaroid Type 85 Pos/Neg film). She solarised the images by peeling the positive away from the negative before it was fully developed and held them to the Californian sun to create the funky stuff. Clever, eh?

Enchanted Forest

ERWhittington 3 Comments

Hello! Back from my trip away and raring to go again in this beautiful English autumn. I had an excellent trip but I don’t think I’ll ever shake off that wonderful feeling of coming home. I’m so glad I appreciate my country still, even after loving so many other places.

My inbox is bursting with an influx of photographic gems, some delivered drip by drip (mini blog posts bubbling away gradually) and some in big, unexpected shebangs of glory – every photographer is different – but now I have so many I want to show! It keeps my portfolio changing.

These were sent to me recently from a photographer I worked with in Scotland in May. I have already put one in my portfolio. By Calandra, from the ‘Kingdom of Fife’, headdress mania:

The last image I am calling Fairy Steps. Nearby was an area covered in wreaths, lanterns and coloured ribbons after some kind of Green Man ritual, so it felt like a very special place!

Update: two more!

Through the desert… (My head soaked in river water)

ERWhittington 8 Comments
Hello! 
Just a quick update while I find my feet here in the desert…
I’ve just finished spending an amazing week in the company of wonderful people, a house/commune of girls who are all very different, yet all very like me, where going around nude is nothing out of the ordinary, beautiful art is created, and evenings were spent testing our tolerance for heat in hot tubs, then cooling off by slipping like whales – or, perhaps more flatteringly (possibly), otters – into the cooler conjoining pool, while sipping wine or water laced with freshly squeezed and freshly picked lime-tangerines (we couldn’t diagnose them; they crossed boundaries but tasted deliciously sour). What an amazing reality. So sad to leave that behind. I have now jolted my system into a city of fakery, artificial pleasure and sin; not my most natural habitat, but a wonderful part of the world from which to discover a nearby(ish) hole in the ground, I hear. And I want to wear feathers in my hair and pretend to be Pocahontas while finding the landscapes of the natives.
Here is a slideshow I made (and please appreciate that I am technologically retarded, in the truest sense of the world, and that this actually took a lot of effort). It shows various nude shots of me and is a good overview of my work so far in that genre. I amused myself by pushing the ‘English fairy’ angle quite heavily; hence the incredibly beautiful song by the incredibly ethereal Bat for Lashes, who spent a lot of time singing through my car’s CD system a couple of years ago and whose third album is going to be grabbed by me as soon as I’m home, as its being released while I’m away. Actually, I’ll just order it online now. 
//www.youtube.com/get_player

Thanks to all those photographers featured. You are great.