February

is nearing its end. Finally, I would say. Albeit the road to full spring is still far off. Usually the trees unfold around 1st of May every year. Give or take. That's still 2 month ahead of time. Which however sounds nicer, than around October, saying... it takes 7 month to get there.

Down to -21.6°C in Svanberga

The sun comes out occasionally, as it did this morning briefly. An frost coated landscape and temperatures around -7°C at my balcony. While other parts way outside of Stockholm, had temperatures down to -21.6°C like in Svanberga, near Norrtälje. Also Berga at the southeast coast, got something like -12°C.

Has Tullinge station ceased ?

For unknown reasons the Stockholm-Tullinge station, isn't reporting anymore. It is as if the station has been canceled. Which is a pity, because it used to be my reference station 7 km from here, totally unaffected by the city's warm bubble. Often showing extreme low temperatures, compared to the city core.

Deep Winter here

So, from a perspective of early "springtime", it looks like deep winter here. The only difference is that it gets lighter earlier, and in the late afternoon you still have light. Even when i get home 0600 in the morning, it is already lighter (but no sunrise yet). This will however change very quickly given that the sun make large strides towards long days and show nights as we walk into spring and then pre-summer in June.

"V" - the mothership approaching

It is salary day, and I ordered the "V" (1983) mothership from a guy in Spain, who makes these. It is the "weathered version" - which gives the plastic a really nice touch of weathering - way prettier than the raw plastic. Together with LED illumination from the inside. The disk is around 18 cm in diameter, standing on a pin (which i will likely paint in black later). I only need to get a 12 V adapter to make the "windows" shine from the inside.

As you can tell...

the details of the mother ship above are way better, compared to the attempt back in 2004, when u used a photo from TV which i put into an image of Stockholm, altogether measuring only 350 pixels. Well, back then our computer screens had way smaller sizes and resolutions (appearing bigger), but with today's standard, turning into very small images.

The idea is, that i do the same in 2026, but with better resolution, while being based on a good detailed model like you see above - which i just ordered from the guy in Spain with the eBay name: "starmodels". Located in Irun, Spain.

Other ships

By the way, the guy in Spain also even other "V" ships where the visitors roamed around. One of them is made authentical which was even approved by Kenneth Johnson, the creator of "V".

Mothership over L.A.

Pretty impressive

I mean, if you are a "V" fan. The last photo shops the mother ship hovering over Los Angeles. Here the disk is 14 cm in diameter, while the LA square is 20 cm. Really cool.

However, I am not a collector by any means, and went only for the mothership - which i think is absolutely awesome. And pretty unique - given that there are barely any out there. (A few lesser ones can be found, but not in this well made).

I may (or may not) get a single space craft - the simpler ones. It is around 110 Euro. But it depends on how my photography is progressing. As of lately i have barely done anything at all in the past 6-7 weeks. Not exactly what i thought would happen. But my inspiration level was at the bottom of the sea, sort of.

Yet, it will not remain there, I am sure.

Slow work

at times a bit slow with projects. Also because I am not really trying to make everything look hyper real or anything, It is really just a matter of experimentation, often combined with real life light painting, while the camera shutter stays open. Then in order to fine tune details, as well taking away undesired details, i used the built-in Photoshop AI.

It does a great job when it comes to iron our unwanted details, while at the same time giving a lot of leeway to make figures come out in a more dynamic way. You can take away lights in a photo that illuminate a figure (like Trinity or Neo from "The Matrix", but the illuimation angles remain. That is really pretty cool. I love of course, that my photos are based on real well made models, and not generated by AI !!!

Or being able to take away a shaft (like the mothership which sits on one like a lamp). Taking away the shaft in an easy manner, while the correction itself integrates/adapts well to an existing photo background. There, Photoshop AI is pretty useful, especially when you make correction in blurry areas, you are not really that much restricted by low resolution (because it barely matters). But once you need LARGER areas with sharp details - Photoshop AI clearly sucks big times.

Limitations & Workarounds

Nevertheless, i do like to work with limitations - which often enables better workarounds, ideas and how to get things looking good. We humans often don't learn so well, when we get everything delivered on a silver plate. Rather; it dumbs us down in a sneaky "quietly-coming-in-from-behind" way.

The traps along the road

Sure we want AI that is super high resolution. But what happens then with art and creativity ? You see the effect already on both internet and mobile phones. We are locked into platforms, and just consume, scroll like robots. Remember 1999-2001 - when the internet was full of well made creations, creativity and skill ? Many guys did amazing Photoshop work for companies, and got paid big bucks.

Today, everything is kind of "laid out" for us. With slick looking sites, which appear to me like clones from a robot. Pretty, cold, slick and... free from any individuality. In the end, they all look the same. While the contents are more and more and mainstreamed in a way, that just develops bore.

It has all become too lean to be human.

Google search engine is pathetic.

You get of everything more than plenty - but rarely what you truly want to look at, or research deeper. Well, it is originally a US Military, section DARPA creation... never intended to be "there for you". It is the cabal's tool.

The bad guys. Duck Duck Go, ain't much better. Their search results are as abysmal and bad in quality, as those from Google. Just saying.

With Russian Yandex, I get a lot better search results. Even in photography. Instead of only getting commercial links to stuff to buy - i do encounter more interesting links, to older info about photography, cameras, lens designs etc. In reality Yandex is actually a western oriented company but they don't filter out as much as Google and the others.