Outdoor Location

The Trees…

ERWhittington 8 Comments

…They called me to go and model for Dave Aharonian, and what an honour it was! We were very excited to be able to make stuff together for his Rainforest Nudes project (see his incredible website if you happen to feel like being blown away). I just adore his technique and finishes; the pure quality of it needs to be seen in physical prints. We had 40 frames available and about 1.5 hours. Luckily everything just ‘clicked’. I hope you like these as much as I do.

Any favourites?!

Also, Dave took these on his iPhone a few mins before we left the house:

 …And, just to lower the tone a bit, here are some shots of me on the ferry (also iPhone-snapped – there’s just no escaping it, is there?), documenting the perils of long hair in strong winds. In the last one, I was actually being attacked by my own hair. Nice of Dave to help…


Turning the Wheels

ERWhittington 2 Comments

Sometimes, you’ve just got to cartwheel across the grass. It’s an overwhelming urge, especially when you used to do gymnastics (I spent hours and hours doing ’round offs’ in the garden. Cartwheeling and hand standing always makes me feel about 8 years old).

These were all taken on the Isle of Wight by Mark Davy-Jones, whose whimsical, sometimes ‘twisted’, style of post processing is brilliant, and who I’ll hopefully be working with again at some point next year. Mark and his lovely wife kindly fed and put me up overnight amongst their gorgeous maine coon cats (sadly I failed to entice one onto my bed at night).

I’m modelling here alongside Miss Kayleigh Lush, who you’ll have seen on this blog before. Click to enlarge as always…

Fresh Zing

ERWhittington 1 Comment

I’m back in the UK! Woop! Gotta love those long-haul flights, especially when they decide not to bother putting your suitcase on the plane (ahem, delta airlines, NOT impressed!)… The conversation at the baggage reclaim desk went as follows:

Me, in London after a four-hour delay (during which I read an entire memoir of an ex-prisoner at Alcatraz cover to cover; pretty intense!), a re-routing from New York to Minneapolis, terrible vegetarian food, definitely not enough leg room and not really enough water to drink: ‘Excuse me, my bag doesn’t seem to be here.’
‘Help services’ man, glancing at my passport: ‘Oh yeah, your luggage didn’t make it onto the flight.’
     
(Un-elaborating pause while I stare at him…)
Me: ‘Riiiight. What am I expected to do, in that case?’ (I am extremely polite, despite my piercing glares)
‘Help Services’ man: ‘Fill in this form. We’ll then post your bag to you.’ (NO APOLOGY OR EXPLANATION! (Until I, reminding myself of my mother slightly, say ‘Will I be getting an apology of any kind?’ to which Mr Blasé finally replies ‘sorry madam’ and ‘sometimes that happens. They don’t tell us why.’) HUMPF!)

Anyway, so far I’m amazingly un-jet-lagged, so am spending a few mins addressing the ever-present and imminently overwhelming backlog of stuff to put on this blog of mine, before I address the rather exciting pile-up of emails I need to reply to. I’m hoping to cram in as many shoots as possible before I go away again in 3.5 weeks. Lots of Canadien/American stories to follow in due course (camera-computer cable pending), some with photographic evidence of the more artistic variety… but first… presenting what I call ‘fresh zing’, a development of a theme, by Rebecca Parker. So fresh and so clean (with cool lens stuff going on with trees and grass):

And something Rebecca found from a previous shoot:

Fertile Lands

ERWhittington 5 Comments

These were taken by Imagesse in Gloucestershire. The lavender field in this first shot was one of many streaming, dazzling, potent beds of rich colour, which were just incredibly beautiful. The bees thought so too; I posed amongst a constant buzz of them, busily going about their pollen parties by my feet.

The rest of the shots here were taken in a corn field we found nearby; the weather had started to crack just as we were finishing our very impromptu session; my fertility dance worked – fat drops of rain fell out of the sky! (Notice the strip of lavender field in the background of the colour shots)

Mmmm… lavender…

 
So yeah… Check out the lavender cupcakes I made. They were AMAZING, quite frankly (despite the haphazard icing). I felt a bit bad stealing a few sprigs after the shoot, but only took a tiny little bit, honest… And they had plenty. (BAD morality; I strongly disapprove of this type of rationality in general…)

Rabbits

ERWhittington 7 Comments

Paul Bartholomew has sent me a few more shots from our short shoot at the ruins/river/forest location near me in Oxfordshire. He’s a great photographer; check out his stuff at the impressive site 1x.com, where the last portrait below has just been published.

 
I really love the light and bokeh in these, and how natural the portraits are. For the set in the blue skirt, I was imagining being in a fairytale, lost and distressed, or calling on my animal troupe to help me with some quest, so naturally began channelling rabbits and other small woodland creatures through my poses… Good to have a story in your head! 🙂

Running, Rivers and The Sweet Nectar of Divine Divinity

ERWhittington 5 Comments

I’ve had such a busy, productive day today, getting lots done, but the two things I’m most pleased/excited about are:

1. I went for a run this morning. I’ve been meaning to go for a run for roughly a million years, but never quite worked out how to go about it. I know, I overthink things. The thoughts flittering around my mind are those such as: where would I run? Is it better to run on tarmac or grass? Will I be able to do it? By what date, exactly (and this is my ambition surfacing), would I be able to qualify for and enter a marathon? Which charity would I choose to run for? And then the more immediate concerns, such as, how do you make the transition between walking and running without looking as though you suddenly think you might be being chased? (Seriously though, I never see people begin to run – they are always already running, as though they came out of the womb doing it and haven’t even stopped to consider other methods of getting about.)

And anyway, I know; who cares what you look like? I actually don’t, but I am reminded of a comedy sketch I once saw about that moment when you’re walking in the street and realise you need to be going in the opposite direction. Do you just immediately turn around with no apparent acknowledgement of your error, the comedian wondered, or do you slap your forehead, shake your head at yourself, rolling your eyes at passersby so that they too might acknowledge and share in your foolhardiness, admitting, by your dramatic display, that it’s not the normal thing to just turn swiftly and change direction, and invalidating each and every step you’ve taken thitherto in the current trajectory as being wrong and misguided and wally-like? (I am very slightly mad and once, when walking to school, started pigeon-walking (you know, where you take tiny steps so that the heel of one foot touches the toes of the foot behind; no, I was rarely on time for school) then, intrigued by my new foot pattern (the alleyway was particularly monotonous), started mimicking my feet with my hands as I walked (a kind of ‘air walk’, if you will), before realising there was a girl innocently walking in the alley behind me, quietly bemused. I immediately resumed a more conventional walking motion, hands back down, strides at a more practical length (pigeon walking is quite wobbly when you’re in a rush), and hoped she might think she’d merely imagined my non-conformist methods of getting to school… Apart from this episode in my life, I am frequently told I have a nice walk (again, ‘nice walks’ strike me as bizarre, but no more tangents for now), so should/could possibly, in theory, have a nice run. I also won a lot of races at school for sprinting and was always chosen to compete in the county sports day, but I’m showing off now (and it’s irrelevant).

Anyway, yep, I went for a run. I ran up and down hills; mostly up, in hindsight; on grass and on tarmac, and on a lot of mud. It was fun! I was terrible (I’m flexible, strong, but lung power has room for improvement), but I’m promised by my younger brother that this is an inevitable and temporary affliction of beginner adult runners. I’m wondering now whether my body will change shape, if I keep this up, and how strange that would be, considering I haven’t changed body shape since the age of 15/16. We shall (literally) see, I imagine.

2. The second thing I am unbelievably, perhaps unreasonably excited by, is the fact that I’ve FINALLY mastered making masala chai like I used to drink in India. Being prone to foul moods whenever I remember and think of the lack of it in my life, this is a massive cause for celebration. Now I know exactly how to do it I can whip up a brew whenever I fancy one. This makes me incredibly happy. (I still need to go to India ASAP though, even just for the Thalis.) …Pestle & mortar-crushed spices (cloves, cinnamon sticks, black peppercorns, cardamom, dry-roasted ginger), a tablespoon of indian tea, milk and water in a pan boiled up, sugar….. luscious frothy, sweet heaven in a glass.

Oh, and I have some new photos from Drew Smith, taken in Oxfordshire recently. Thanks Drew! 🙂

Maiden

ERWhittington 3 Comments

This is one of my favourite recent images, taken by Birmingham-based photographer Paul Bartholomew.

The location was a ruined hall in Oxfordshire, which sits by a river and small forest, in which this particular shot was taken. (I hope to show more images from the 2-hour shoot later and have already seen a couple more which I like very much.) The headdress I’m wearing here was kindly donated to me by the styling team at Chanticleer Brides, whose 2011 collection ‘back to nature’ I modelled for last year. I thought it was so sweet they let me keep it, and I’ve been waiting all this time to make the most of it. Below is also a softer make up look than I usually do; warmer hues and almost no mascara, with an emphasis on porcelain/creamy skin which this shot brings out really well, I think!

Please click on the image to enlarge it…