Francois Venter
July 2025 - Houtbaai harbour
About the Image(s)
Houtbaai literally translates to wooden bay harbour It is a small fishing harbour close to Cape Town IN South Africa. This was a sunset picture. Shot of tripod
Settings were
Nikon z7-2 Nikon 16-35mm lens at 16mm F11, ISO31 and 1 second exposure. There would have been a graduated three stop filter over the sky as well
6 comments posted
Interesting image. It almost is a fish eye image so IMO the perspective seems off. I like the muted colors of the picture. Posted: 07/08/2025 05:32:02
it was done with a 16-35 miles @16mm close to the water. The bit of distorted perspective was therefore intentional to bring the boats more into the image as a normal wide angle image makes the boats look very small Posted: 07/13/2025 15:13:03
Thank you for the explanation. Makes sense now Posted: 07/13/2025 19:41:45
Beautiful sunset in the harbor - especially the sky. Personally, I like to center a symmetrical image with a strong vanishing point with leading lines. One other thing - have you considered straightening the photo? Posted: 07/18/2025 13:55:40
Dawn Gulino
Great clouds and nice balance on this, although I think that there's a bit too much space on the left side and think it would be better cropped into the left most boat.
I like the color balance of this and how you processed it. I am also impressed with your always mentioning you shoot with a grad filter! I've become lazy at that and just bracket and blend in PS. Nice job with it! Posted: 07/24/2025 02:02:03
I like the color balance of this and how you processed it. I am also impressed with your always mentioning you shoot with a grad filter! I've become lazy at that and just bracket and blend in PS. Nice job with it! Posted: 07/24/2025 02:02:03
I like the composition in the way the mountains for a V and bring my eye into the center. I agree with Tom in his edit as he bring the boats more into the image, and I like the way he has dropped the sky. The color and lighting look good to me and project the sense of a sunset.
I like your use of a graduated filter, I have one but I haven't used it enough and this helps me think more on how to use it.
The image seems to have some barrel distortion. Are you able to adjust that in post processing? Had you thought about doing multiple shots and stitching them together as a pano? With all that said I really think this is a great shot. Posted: 07/24/2025 16:03:50
I like your use of a graduated filter, I have one but I haven't used it enough and this helps me think more on how to use it.
The image seems to have some barrel distortion. Are you able to adjust that in post processing? Had you thought about doing multiple shots and stitching them together as a pano? With all that said I really think this is a great shot. Posted: 07/24/2025 16:03:50