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Via Warren Ellis:

I mentioned a few posts back that I did a shoot with my friend Michelle whilst we were both at the Canonical Allhands conference at the La Mola. We didn't have much time - maybe forty minutes for something that I'd usually expect to take a couple of hours over - and the rushing about (not to mention the heat, the humidity and my overwhelming nervousness) meant that I made some rookie mistakes that I shouldn't have. Then again, that was the whole point of the shoot.

Anyway, three weeks after returning from Spain, and I've managed to pare the shoot down to the best sixteen frames that I shot. There were others, but not as good as these, nor as representative of what we did. Michelle was an awesome subject, especially when you consider that she's never posed for anyone before and was being ordered about by a big, hairy, sweaty Englishman with camera around his neck.

Flickr slideshow below the fold. Hope you enjoy it; I enjoyed making it.

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Yesterday I did my second ever proper photoshoot (the first one having been at Allhands with Michelle). This time I was doing some family portraiture of a friend's daughters, one a very precocious nine-year-old and the other having just turned one.

It was, by and large, hell.

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Everybody on Planet Ubuntu[-UK] is doing that broadband speed test meme. Since I'm a sucker...

It's a good job I don't upload stuff often.

On this day, sixty-five years ago, the men assigned to Operation Overlord landed on the beaches of Normandy. British and American Airborne troops landed behind enemy lines began to take control of the bridges and other strategic objectives that would allow the beach-heads to be successful.

Between 14,000 and 19,000 men were dead, wounded or captured by the end of the day.

That the world is as it is today, that Europe is the shape that it is and that people enjoy the freedoms that they do is thanks in large part to the sacrifices of those men, and we should be thankful to them.