Rana Banerjee Photography Blog

The river, so busy with boats, and with the tide streaming in, still looks peaceful and calm just after the sun has set. The lights of the town turn the sky pink above them, as the boats bob slowly against the quickly darkening sky. I especially love the red reflection from the light on top of the bridge as it twinkles against the water.

Ginger in a hoodie, with Joe, Tai, Drew, Phoenix, Mark, and Kirk walking off into the distance, the day after New Years, in Delaware. Very pretty, and very empty.

On a very sad day, I felt the need to go outside, to seek out my reminder that there is beauty in the world, in each and every corner the sunlight creating patterns, at play with the world. Then the fog rolled in, dull and grey, misting my glasses and driving me back inside without relief.

At least that’s how it felt behind this building.

Behind my house are a number of auto related businesses: used auto parts stores, body shops, and towing companies, alongside a recycling redemption center, busy with drunks all morning long. Within 5 years, they will all be gone. The area is slated to receive subway service soon, and the stop will be right in the middle of this currently slightly grimy area. Already, a large condo complex has gone up, surely the first of many. I’m sure that the landowners in the area are just waiting for the subway to come,  so that they can sell their formerly industrial properties to developers for tidy sums. The homeless aluminium can collectors, grateful for the our state’s bottle deposit law, that spend their mornings in drunken brotherhood in front of the recycling redemption center will have to find a new roost, and the auto shops will be forced deeper into suburbia. I don’t feel too sad, because I know that the only constant in a city is constant renewal, but I find the neighborhood as it is now to be much more fascinating, less planned than thrown together.

I liked how this picture turned out, the darker rock in the forground, the striations in the rock, and the sunset sky. Taken in Middlesex Falls Reservation, last weekend.

At the end of one of the prettiest, most picturesque stretchs of pure white sand you can imagine, lies an decrepit, rusting M4 Sherman Tank, the primary tank used by the United States to win WWII. I would imagine that the US has abandoned such tanks on beaches the world over. In this case, the island of Culebra was used by the US Navy to practice their bombing, and I assume the tank was placed to give pilots something to aim at, much the same way that the little fly is painted into a urinal to give men something to aim at.  The bombing was halted in the 70′s, but apparently the Navy didn’t bother cleaning up after themselves. It’s a good place to sit and wonder about the use, and misuse of American military might around the world.

When I am stressed, it helps me to look at a picture of  a calming place that I’ve taken: it reminds me that I was once there, in that wonderful place of calm, and grace willing, I’ll be back someplace like it sometime soon. The picture above is of Culebra, from my most recent travels.

Today, this picture has helped me not think so much about CSS, HTML and how little I know of either. Powerful tools in the right hands, dim cudgels in mine. But I do have a website with (part) of my portfolio up and this blog, and I think I am actually pleased with the way it looks.