Cerno's Colombo

There is a popular Sri Lankan blogger who blogs under his online name Cerno. Five years ago, he made his Flickr photos in the public domain. I found great photos of Colombo, Sri Lanka in his Flickr so I decided to write a blog post using some of his Colombo photos with commentary by me.

We’ll begin with two photos of Independence Square. I like the angle he took in the second photo

which is capturing the Independence Memorial Hall in a great way. 

This is a nice shot of Colombo at night featuring interesting light effects.

This is what Cerno calls an “Unglamorous Colombo panorama”. He had taken this photo from Durdans Hospital in 2007. While this isn’t the poshest aspect of Colombo, I wouldn’t call it unglamorous. I think it’s a nice depiction of the Colombo suburbs. The abundance of buildings in Colombo are often criticised, but for me that’s part of Colombo’s charm. This picture has a lot of trees alongside buildings which I think is an aspect of the Colombo look and feel.

Here’s an old photo of Colombo probably taken in the mid or late 1980s. Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court complex can be seen in the picture. Colombo looks so different to how it is now.

Here’s a photo of Colombo taken much more recently in December 2012. This provides a strong

contrast to the previous picture taken in the 1980s. While both photos were taken from different places,

they both point towards Colombo Fort with the Bank of Ceylon building being the most common link

between the two. I personally prefer contemporary Colombo. This is the first in a set of photos Cerno

seems to have taken from a building.

Here’s a panorama taken from the same position, thus we get a much wider view including a better

look at the sea. Just like in the previous photo, we see alongside buildings many trees and the Beira

Lake.

There are quite a few colourful buildings in this photo. 

I’ll end this with a lovely shot of contemporary Colombo featuring modern buildings. We also see some

green with the trees, the Beira Lake and a bit of grass. One thing I’ve noticed in these four photos is

that there is hardly any traffic on the Colombo roads which seems strange to me as this is daytime

when the traffic is very intense. The peaceful Colombo roads are good to see.

These photos showcase attributes of Colombo which includes its history, modernity, uniqueness and

colour. If you enjoyed this, you may be interested in my previous blog post “Captivating Colombo”

featuring photos I took of Colombo. I also started off that post with Independence Square.