Sheer

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.

Yerbury Fine Art Nude Masterclass

ERWhittington 6 Comments

I’m just back from a very enjoyable shoot with a photographer and his wife, a couple I’ve visited quite a few times now and love to see. We did some really nice un-posed and natural, expressive nudes (inspired by Jonvelle) in their beautiful house, and it seems a fitting time to now blog about a recent day spent with another husband and wife team.

I love working with Trevor and Faye Yerbury – they produce such beautiful, classy work and are lots of fun to model for, so I was happy to be chosen to model for one of their Fine Art Nude Masterclasses the other day. As always, the photographers taking the course were all a pleasure to meet and seemed to enjoy themselves very much, snapping away with big smiles all round! The location was Pipewell Hall, an old country manor house in Northamptonshire. I was mainly stationed indoors with Faye, making the most of the building’s incredible features and furnishings, while the other model, Zoi, spent the day outdoors in the grounds with Trevor. It was really nice to meet Zoi after we’d tried but failed to meet up in Holland (where she is based most of the time, though she frequently visits the UK still) and we had a good natter over lunch. 🙂 We made a good contrast as photographic subjects; Zoi with her beautiful Greek/’Amazonian’ look and me with a more ‘pre-Raphaelite’/serene style (well, that’s what Trevor said anyway!).

See here for more info on the range of workshops currently on offer by the Yerbury team: http://www.yerburystudio.com/

A few of the photographers attending have very kindly sent me some of their shots from the day. It’s interesting to see some of the different takes on the same poses. I was really happy to give my first airing to my new pointe shoes (ribbons to be sewn on very soon; old ones to be dyed black!) and although I’d only mentioned to Faye in passing that I’d brought them along while she was doing my hair at the beginning of the day, ‘ballet’ ended up being quite a strong theme for my posing, with lots of happy skirt swirling in front of the window. 🙂

These first shots are by Andrea (Pink Lily Photography) – read Andrea’s blog post about the day here:

By Maria Tanner (Lace Market Photography – see Maria’s blog post here!):

By Ian Parry AKA Maximus Operandi:

And last but not least, by Faye:

Zoi and I posing together outside at the end (first shot here by Ian Parry; colour snaps by Faye)

Trevor overseeing all:

 And a group shot (Zoi and I being silly in the middle)! 🙂

Thanks again to everyone who has sent me shots – it’s much appreciated! And to anyone reading, please feel free to let me know any favourites… Your feedback is always fun to read! 🙂
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In other news, I’ve recently re-jiggled by portfolio on Model Mayhem (click here to go there) – trying to organise it so that, by clicking on the relevant galleries, photographers who are less interested in nudes can see my fashion/commercial/editorial work all in one place without having to wade through all the more artistic shots, while photographers interested in figure work primarily don’t have to wade through shots of me grinning and running blissfully along beaches in sportswear… Wonder if it works well like that as a way to show versatility without having them all mixed up and it looking too eclectic – why not pop over and take a gander?

Veils

ERWhittington 1 Comment

Hello!

The busyness continues and I’ve had some brilliant shoots recently at Eye for An Image Studio, with my partner in crime Ivory Flame, the results of which have been popping up in various places, much to our excitement! I’ll hopefully show lots of those shots soon, and also have roughly 11 million shots queueing up anyway to be blogged, which I can’t wait to display here. I’m also hoping to be back at the studio for a day sometime this summer. Brilliantly, I have now managed to work out how to exit the (thoroughly straightforward) car park (at the business park where the studio’s located) without first driving endlessly around in circles. I am such a total idiot. Especially as once I managed to go out the way I had initially come in (genius! And only once rescued and guided by Martyn Davis, the studio owner, who after saying our goodbyes found my confident veering off in the 100% wrong direction a little odd), I then tried to drive the wrong way down a one-way road. All still without having left the business park (thankfully; no one else was around to particularly inflict my idiocy on). There are no words for how ridiculous I am.

Shaking our heads and moving on… Tomorrow I’m off to Dublin for three nights for some outdoor landscape nudes – pleeeeeaaase can the weather stay this good? Today I tore myself away from admin/packing/general guilt and apologies for being behind on emails (as much I try, and trust me, I really do, I am never quite on top of things) to go for lunch at an Oxfordshire pub by the river, watching the punts go by…. bliss!

These four shots were taken by Stephen Phillips at Barrie Spence‘s studio in Livingston during my tour to Scotland earlier this month. Editor-in-Chielf of Parasitology and Partick Thistle Supporter, Stephen has led a very interesting life so far, contributing to the research of diseases such as malaria, and was very nervous before our shoot, he said, but I think these shots are lovely!

The Gentle Fall

ERWhittington

(Note to American readers: this post is not about autumn!)

Some new work from Collin Lyons, who was fantastic to work with; high energy and buzzing enthusiasm. He even made me halloumi salad for lunch before we started, despite my train getting in late. Collin had this enormous piece of sheer fabric, so we played on my apparent freak-ability to throw fabric wildly in the air then pose serenely within the same split-second while it fell in front of my skin. We did this over and over again, fascinated by the range of shots we were getting on the back of camera; each time the fabric did something completely different, depending how I threw it and how it felt like floating, and at what point Collin caught its fall with the click.