water

Maya, and Stupidity

ERWhittington 3 Comments

As everyone probably knows, via the deluge of related facebook updates online if not by simply looking out the window, it’s snowy here in the UK. I ended up having to cancel my weekend plans to visit Cambridge and lost out on quite a bit of earnings PLUS a cancelled hotel booking (and subsequently had to cancel my Plan B of having a girly lunch here in Oxford due to a second round of snowfall this morning). BUT, I have already managed to rearrange my Cambridge trip to 9th/10th March, and managed to bag myself a photoshoot outside in the snow while I was at it, courtesy of a photographer with a landrover! Hopefully more on that in a future post, but suffice it to say, we had fun out there in the winter wonderland near my house!

Today has involved such things as German lessons with the Vati, piano practise and other such Edwardian-style pursuits, plus a dash of catching up on Take Me Out, which I think is more of a comedy than a dating show, but brilliant nevertheless. (When asked to describe herself in astronomical terms, it emerged that one girl didn’t know what a constellation was…. AND THEN HE PICKED HER! Excellent. As a person who is academically quite intelligent but life-wise extremely ‘ditzy’ (not to mention impractical) myself, I can relate to her brain collapse, if I squint a lot, and will refrain from making the observation that there definitely exists a certain type of men who seem to pick stupid women simply to make themselves feel more clever. Fair play to them.)

Taking out my bitch teeth (arguably), I have been revisiting my (younger) youth recently via a stint of teenage-self albums, via the humble minidisc (which I am prone to defending on any invitation, so I won’t let myself start on about how ridiculous it is that they didn’t catch on, when CDs scratch so easily and fall over and die after three plays, whereas minidiscs keep their chip protected by tough plastic and last pretty much forever, or about how I worked for £3 p/hr at a bakery, aged 15, to buy my flashing-light CD/minidisc player which I still use and love). The problem is, I don’t have all my favourite albums from my (younger) youth* on actual CD and therefore digitally/on my phone/iPod if I ever buy one, which is a sad state of affairs. (I buy CDs most weeks now, and have done for years, but am ashamed to say that a lot of my early music collection came from ignorance/indifference regarding the illegal download phenomenon). Nevertheless, on my £3 p/hr CD/minidisc player, I’ve just been playing Destiny’s Child for half an hour and am now girl power in human form. 

OK, I’ll shut up now and show a recent favourite photo, taken by an Australian friend/model/photographer, Jayne Hartt, while cooling off between other shoots. I love it! 🙂
*Destiny’s Child, Nelly Furtado, Usher, Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera, The Sugababes… etc…. 
Funny story about The Sugababes actually… Due to my past illegal downloading/’sharing’ of music (which I emphasise I truly am ashamed of and would NEVER do now) I have one Sugababes album, ‘Three’, which ends with the song ‘Maya’. This is an absolutely stunning, beautiful, soul-warming track which I used to re-wind and play over and over again. It’s sung by Heidi and, being the very last track, marks a change in direction for the group from RnB to something more timeless and universal… Or so I thought… It turns out (and I discovered this only yesterday!!!) that the ‘Maya’ I was listening to at the end of the Sugababes album was not in fact sung by the Sugababes (I now wonder why I so firmly believed it was a solo by Heidi – I think I thought I’d read it somewhere! I even remember thinking that she must have trained with some eastern/Asian singing tutors especially!) but in fact by Susheela Raman, a completely different singer of southern Indian (Tamil)/UK descent. When downloading the individual tracks by the Sugababes, I obviously mistook ‘Maya’ by the Sugababes (which is apparently a song dedicated to Mutya Buena’s younger sister, who sadly passed away), for a southern indian love song. True story. And to do Susheela Raman’s ‘Maya’ credit (it really is a stunning, captivating song; Heidi truly outdid herself…) here’s the song, below, and I’ll order the (physical) album on which the original (imposter) ‘Maya’ appears, Salt Rain –  because it’s nice to know that this song isn’t just a one off on the part of the Sugababes, and that there is more of this beautiful voice to listen to!

Damsels in Distress: Shalott

ERWhittington 2 Comments

Copied from the ever-helpful Wikipedia, this is the story of the Lady of Shalott, the inspiration for a day with Keith Cooper last summer:

According to legend, the Lady of Shalott was forbidden to look directly at reality or the outside world; instead she was doomed to view the world through a mirror, and weave what she saw into tapestry. Her despair was heightened when she saw loving couples entwined in the far distance, and she spent her days and nights aching for a return to normality. One day the Lady saw Sir Lancelot passing on his way in the reflection of the mirror, and dared to look out at Camelot, bringing about a curse. The lady escaped by boat during an autumn storm, inscribing ‘The Lady of Shalott’ on the prow. As she sailed towards Camelot and certain death, she sang a lament. Her frozen body was found shortly afterwards by the knights and ladies of Camelot, one of whom is Lancelot, who prayed to God to have mercy on her soul. The tapestry she wove during her imprisonment was found draped over the side of the boat.

Keith was inspired by paintings such as this one by Waterhouse (which happens to be adorning my nearest radiator by way of magnetism), and had wanted to do this shoot with Ivory Flame and I for a long time, so we arranged a date, boat hire and took a row up and down the river here in Oxford. I absolutely love the results. The colours, reflections and fabrics and range of emotions (there was laughter, tenderness, peacefulness and quite a bit of death), came out so well, I think, and I’m really proud of these.

Help me pick a favourite?! (As always, click and scroll through to see larger.)

Outtake alert:

Holly and I are planning to do our best to visit the current pre-Raphaelite exhibition in London before it finishes this weekend. Who thinks we should turn up to the Tate in our long, white dresses?
We will also be modelling together on Saturday the 9th of February at Eye For An Image Studio in Banbury, Oxfordshire. I think there may be some time available for anyone interested in working with an experienced and creative duo.

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.

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?