A photographer was fined over $1,100 (£891) after he almost crashed a drone into Fatboy Slim as the DJ performed at a concert in front of thousands of people.

Amateur photographer Giles Dalby was filming an atmospheric video of Fatboy Slim’s (real name Norman Cook) concert at Brighton Beach in Brighton, U.K. on July 22, 2022.

However, Dalby mixed up the controls on his DJI Mavic mini drone. The photographer put the drone into sports mode — making it harder to avoid obstacles — and flew the device onto the stage where Cook was performing.

Dalby’s drone crashed onto the stage 15 minutes before the concert ended. The device narrowly missed Cook and endangered members of the 8,500-strong crowd.

‘An Honest Mistake’

On Thursday, Dalby appeared in Brighton Magistrates Court to face charges of operating the drone in a careless or negligent manner, which put lives and property in danger.

According to ISP Today, Dalby admitted recklessly allowing a drone to put Cook and the audience at risk. The photographer expressed remorse during the court case and clarified that he had no harmful intentions.

Dalby explained that he was aiming for a dramatic aerial shot of the concert but lost control of the drone after mistakenly activating the sport mode, which disabled some collision sensors.

“I did not intend to put anyone in danger. I wanted to create a slow, cinematic appearance,” Dalby tells the court.

“I crashed trying to leave the area, looking to back out for an overview of the scene and finish with a wide view.

“It was an honest mistake that I will ensure will never repeat itself.

“There was no malicious intent. I switched it into sport mode which deactivates the downward sensor so I could come quickly up and out, but I accidentally went forward and down.”

To demonstrate his commitment to safety, Dalby pointed out that he had since obtained a drone pilot’s license. He also acknowledged his error in flying the drone over a populated area, recognizing the potential hazards involved.

However, the court was shown footage of the incident and heard that Dalby had ignored multiple warnings that appeared in the drone’s flight data.

“The footage shows a near-miss collision with the crowd and performer,” Prosecutor Megan Attree tells Brighton magistrates’ court.

“There was no damage or injury, but the risk was very real and very present.”

Dalby was ordered to pay a fine of $732 (£576 GBP), along with a $292 (£230 GBP) victim surcharge and $108 (£85 GBP) in costs, resulting in a total penalty of $1132.00 (£891 GBP).

Image credits: Header photo via Flickr/Alterna2.

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A photographer and graphics designer created a set of mindblowing AI images of The Simpsons using the very latest text-to-image technology.

Milie, known as Princess Prompt online, tells PetaPixel that she used the latest artificial intelligence technology — including Midjourney v6 and an upscaler — to create AI versions of The Simpsons characters

“I wanted to test the new features of the latest version of Midjourney,” Milie explains. “I decided to start with The Simpsons’ characters because I’m a fan and especially because they all have a very defined look with very light colors and accessories that are their own.”

Methodology

Milie looked for a screenshot for each of the characters she wanted to recreate, she would then use that image as a prompt using the “image weight” parameters. Afterward, she described the screenshot to Midjourney as “precisely and concisely” as possible.

“The challenge of this exercise was to give a human look to The Simpsons‘ characters: I didn’t want them to have yellow skin, I wanted us to be able to see them as people we could meet in everyday life,” Milie says.

After Milie had the overall aesthetic defined, she used the same basic prompt for each character and modified the specific details.

“Once all the characters were generated, I sent them to the Magnific.ai artificial intelligence to add detail such as skin texture, hair, wrinkles, etc,” she says.

“I generated all the characters in a week, mainly at night and I didn’t really put any pressure on myself because it was above all an exercise to have fun. Midjourney has this addictive aspect which means that you can spend a lot of time there just for the pleasure of seeing the images that are generated. ”

“Some characters were very easy to generate and others took me a lot more time. For example, the character of Smithers: the difficulty was to find the word that exactly defines his haircut so that it would look similar,” she adds.

Milie notes that if she used “Marge Simpson” in a prompt to Midjourney, it would give her “cartoonish” results. So, she wrote around it and instead described the Simpsons’ matriarch as “a mature woman with a curly blue beehive-style haircut” to better obtain an image that looked more like a human.

“In my opinion, what takes the most time is the choice of the final images, you have to sort things out, and it’s sometimes complicated because artificial intelligence offers us hundreds of images in just a few minutes,” she adds.

“In these cases, you have to show discipline to stick to the aesthetic and the idea that you initially set out to achieve.”

Incredible Results

Milie’s eye-catching AI images provoked a huge response on Facebook where they garnered almost 100,000 reactions.

“The reactions reveal the curiosity, disbelief, disdain, and sometimes fear that generative artificial intelligence arouses,” Milie notes. “The figures also confirm the deep attachment that people have for The Simpsons.”

Milie is also thoroughly impressed with the newest Midjourney: telling PetaPixel that the results are “much more precise and faithful to the initial prompt.”

Milie says she has been practicing “artistic photography” for nearly 20 years and enjoys shooting costumed studio portraiture which she retouches and gets creative with on the computer.

“New tools and new forms of creation in whatever form have always attracted me and aroused my curiosity. So, last summer when generative artificial intelligence emerged among the general public, I was immediately captivated and amazed by the possibilities that opened up to me,” she says.

“I started by using Disco Diffusion, then Stable Diffusion. I also tested Dall-E, but my preference and my favorite remains Midjourney for its ability to produce ultra-rich and detailed images.”

“Ultimately my goal is to succeed in mixing my personal creation with artificial intelligence, or even to train my own artificial intelligence for example with the local version of Stable Diffusion,” she adds.

To see Milie’s photography work, head to her website and Instagram. For her experiments in AI, check out her Facebook Page.

Image credits: Princess Prompt

Deanna Michele has opened a new studio in the former Keir Building

Deanna Michele calls herself the “small town girl who dreams big.” She began her artistic career attending culinary school but soon discovered a love for photography that took her in a new direction. Recently, she moved her studio into a new, larger space on the second floor of the former Keir Building which has been fully renovated by Zack and Marissa King.

“I really got into photography after my daughter was born and have been doing it full time since then,” Deanna said. “I opened a studio a few buildings over, but I had outgrown it. Marissa brought up the opportunity to move here and I jumped on it. I have been friends with Zack and Marissa for a while and they were going to let me make this my own.”

According to Deanna, the other space has several other artists, not all photographers where they shared a bathroom, plus the space was much smaller than what she is working with in the new location. The new studio is bright and airy with large windows facing Walnut Street. A small bassinet sits under one window and a bed takes up the center wall of the studio.

“I currently have about 200 clients a year, so I was at the point I needed a bigger space,” Deanna said. “My specialty is newborn, maternity, families welcoming new babies and weddings. But I also do boudoir shoots which are my main focus.”

Deanna Michele’s new studio interior is bright and airy

Deanna and her husband, Jonathan, married in March 2021, welcoming a son on Christmas morning of that year. She says their daughter is “strong willed and loves horseback riding.” Deanna loves to travel with Italy and Ireland both on her bucket list. Calling her boudoir shoots “Wild Scarlett’s Boudoir,” Deanna believes these types of photo shoots help women reclaim their inner beauty, allowing them to shine.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve developed an addiction to working with Deana because she makes me feel so incredibly amazing every time,” T.P. commented in a testimonial on Deanna’s website. “I was so worried before I did my first shoot a little more than a year ago because I didn’t know how I’d look on camera or how to pose. Deanna is so amazing helping you with posing and giving you direction. She makes you feel so comfortable, and you walk out feeling like a complete and total boss. It’s difficult not to get hooked on that empowering feeling, no matter what I’m going through. Personally, Deanna always brightens my day.”

Appointments can be made by visiting https://deannamichele.photography/. The new studio is located at 27 South Walnut Street, with access to the studio on Southeast Front Street across from the First Presbyterian Church. A sign for the studio is located above the door.

Maven launches wave 2 of its award-winning color-coded lens filter system on Kickstarter, which has already raised US$250,000!

After its first successful Kickstarter Maven has cemented its place in the lens filter market, vying to be in the conversation with the other best filters for photography. The unique color-coded design has revolutionized filter aesthetics, but it’s not just the looks that stand out, the updated filter performance is highly impressive. 

The Kickstarter campaign includes various forms of traditional filters and introduces us to a newly developed Dark-CPL. This is a combination of a neutral density filter and a circular polarizer, eliminating the need to carry more filters for those who often shoot with both. This would be particularly useful for those shooting scenes with water, such as waterfalls or seascapes. The color-coded system signifies which stop ND filter is included. Most importantly, Maven states that the Dark-CPL design “reduces vignetting, especially on very wide-angle lens focal lengths, such as 16mm.”

Maven has also redesigned a new variable polarizing filter system to focus on the best mirrorless cameras, in response to the market movement. Through vigorous testing, it established that mirrorless cameras respond better to LPL (Linear Polarizer) filters, and when used in conjunction with a CPL (Circular Polarizer) it provided little to no color shift, establishing a new variable system.

Smaller graduated ND filters have also been developed, along with updated ‘solid’ ND filters offering 2, 4, 15, 18, and 20-stop options! These ND filters have “AGC Japanese optical glass, 16 layers of MRC coatings, hydrophobic nano resistance & Tier 1 Color Performance.” These qualities make shooting time-lapses and long exposures more achievable, even in the midday sun. 

Other new filters included in the Kickstarter include the Maven IR 720 infrared filter, the Starry Focus filter which aids astrophotographers in manually focusing perfectly on stars with indicators on the filter, and lens flare filters which provide an anamorphic cinema look when capturing lights in a scene.

Maven has given further development to the lens/ filter cap with a complete redesign, changing the magnetic strength and adding an ease-of-use feature that enables you to remove it with a large lens hood attached.  

Lens filters may have been considered to have reached their technological limit, many years ago, but Maven continues to push the capabilities and offer a fresh new take on these already established systems. Ease-of-use features such as magnetic mounts, quick-release cases, and color/ shape filter design provide a lower entry point for beginners and take a lot of the extra (more complicated) steps out of shooting with filter systems. 

The Maven Kickstarter is now live and has already reached its goal. Don’t let that stop you, however, as there are usually some great backer rewards and early bird deals.

Note: As with all crowdfunding projects, there is no guarantee that the final product will match the early depictions in the campaign – or that the final product will be completed or delivered at all. DCW does not endorse this or any other crowdfunding campaign. 

You may also be interested in our guides to the best ND filter, the best variable ND filters, and the best ND grad filters. 

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Gabrielė, or, as other people like to call her, Gab, Gabi, Gabert or Gabe, is a senior community manager at Bored Panda. Despite all the names above you can also call her a Viking since she has acquired a BA in Scandinavian Studies (feel free to send her a message in Norwegian). After the bachelor, this Viking wanted to conquer more lands—that is why she flew to Belgium and finished a MA in Cultural Studies. Gabrielė is a true culture enthusiast. Besides work, she is learning how to play a guitar and enjoys going to movies, art exhibitions and concerts.

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I was checking out Reddit’s lifeprotips subreddit and read what seemed like an amazing life hack: A Redditor advised keeping photographs of your physical keys in your phone’s digital wallet. That way, if you lose a key, a locksmith can cut you a duplicate based on the picture alone. The idea that you can get keys made from a picture is basically the flip side of the warnings you sometimes read in articles with headlines like “Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Post Pictures of Your House Key Online.” So does this work? Is this a new hack that will prevent you from locking yourself out again? Can thieves really duplicate your keys from an Instagram post? Yes and no. Making a key from a photo is theoretically possible, but it’s difficult enough in practice that it’s not something worth being concerned about.

“If you were to show a photo of a key to a locksmith, and if it was a pretty standard key—like a QuickSet or something like that—he could probably use his experience and expertise to determine how long the cuts in that key are,” said Owen Hunter, who worked as a locksmith for both commercial and private clients in Burbank, CA for several years. “But the photo would have to be exactly the size of the key—like a perfect one-to-one photograph—to make a useable copy.”

The difficulty of taking perfectly sized photographs of your keys

According to Hunter, even the slightest angle or discrepancy in size would make it extremely difficult for a locksmith to make a duplicate based on your picture. “You would need to take a photo of the key at an almost perfectly perpendicular angle. It would probably only be possible to do if you had a nice lighting table and [a] down-shooter or something.” In other words: A snapshot from your iPhone wouldn’t work.

Sources on the internet sometimes suggest that taking a photo of your key on a piece of a graph paper will help translate the dimensions, but that wouldn’t be too helpful according to Hunter. “That might make it about 3% easier,” he said.

The above “it-will-never-work” advice applies to the most common, cheapest, commercially available kinds of locks. Higher end locks would likely prove more difficulty, and car keys would be impossible. “I do not know of a way to make car keys based on a photograph. Because there’s so many different kinds, and there’s usually electronics and key fobs involved,” Hunter said. 

The difficulty of finding a locksmith that will take your key-photo-challenge seriously

Maybe you could overcome the technical hurdle of exactly matching the dimensions of a key you no longer have through photographic skills or painstakingly matching the shadows and angles with drafting software, but even if you did, you’d end up facing an even more difficult obstacle: finding a locksmith who would take you seriously. Someone has to make the key for you, and according to Hunter, most locksmiths wouldn’t do it.

“A locksmith would want to know what the hell your problem is,” Hunter explained. “You could be bringing in a photo of anyone’s key. It could be a big security issue that a reputable locksmith isn’t going to want to get involved with… on behalf of every locksmith ever, just bring in your key. Don’t bring a photo; it’s not helpful.”

Three reasonable ways to safeguard against losing your keys

If you must have a version of your keys saved on your phone, there is a much better method than keeping a .jpg in your iWallet. “If you really want a digital backup, you could bring your original key to a locksmith, and they can get a reading on the key’s code and give you its PIN. If you have those two things, then you can just call up a locksmith and tell them to cut a new key for you,” Hunter said.

Another solution: Bring in the lock itself. If you can get into your house, most locks can be removed fairly easily with a screwdriver or a drill, then you can bring the entire mechanism into a locksmith who can make you a new key for your old lock.

The best solution for key losers is the most mundane, but it’s almost comically simple: Use the time you were going to spend taking a perfect photo of your keys to go the hardware store. Spend six bucks to make a couple extra copies of your house key, and keep them somewhere safe. Maybe stash one in the back of your closet and give one to your neighbor Gary. I promise this will be much easier than following the advice of people on the internet.

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