Born in Syracuse, NY, in 1949, Huntington Witherill moved with his family to Santa Monica, California, in 1953, where he began to develop an interest in music. At the age of four, he began taking piano lessons and continued to do so through his late teens with intentions of becoming a concert pianist. However, upon entering college as a music major, Witherill became interested in the study of two-dimensional design. This shift in artistic medium eventually led to a career in fine art photography beginning in 1970. His photographic career represents an unusually diverse approach to the medium including classical landscapes, studies of pop-art, botanical subjects, urban architecture, abstracts, and most recently digital imaging.

Witherill's photographs have been exhibited in more than eighty-five individual and group exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the world. Additionally, his photographs are maintained in numerous public art collections worldwide, including the National Museum of Modern Art- Kyoto, Japan, Fundacióe Van Gogh d'Arles- Arles, France, the Akron Art Museum, Akron, Ohio, and the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York. Lenswork published two monographs by Witherill; Orchestrating Icons and Botanical Dances, both of which received national and international awards. In 1999, Witherill was a recipient of the "Artist of the Year" award presented by the Center for Photographic Art. Since 1975, Witherill has continued to teach photography for a variety of institutions and workshop programs including the University of California, The Friends of Photography, and the Ansel Adams Gallery, among others.