Outside the Coach and Horses

Bright lightsBusy streetsStretching without end: Will they lead me home to you?

Looking across at the Coach and Horses Hotel in Randwick. The Coach and Horses is about five minutes from where I live and I often pass it on my way back home from a walk. It dates back to around 1859 and is still located on its original plot of land, making it one of the oldest still-functioning pubs in Sydney. It was also one of the first local buildings to be connected by telephone at the turn of the century.

It's a very distinctive building but I'd never actually taken a photo of it before, so I'm quite pleased with how it came out. I think shooting it at night really helps to capture the mood of the building and I like the blurred movements of the cars as well... they help to make the scene feel more alive.

A few people have asked previously why I didn't edit out the power lines in the photo. Well, the simple answer is, I don't like editing my photos extensively unless I have to. I have nothing against editing but I dislike changing the feel of a scene completely and in my opinion, I would have if I had removed the lines here. It also would have taken a lot of time that I don't really have at the moment, which was a consideration as well.

Overall I see my role as a photographer, particularly with landscapes and architecture, less about capturing reality per se as trying to best convey a scene the way I saw it in my mind and there are many ways of doing that (from in-camera to post-processing and HDR) but I don't see the point in changing something so much that the original scene becomes less recognisable - like changing the colour of a wall, for instance, or removing a feature that relates to the main subject. To me, editing the lines out here would have removed too much of the reality and story from the photo and made it less interesting. I know not everyone agrees but that's my philosophy and I'm happy with the photo the way it is.

Photo and haiku © CJ Levinson 2012