Acqua Alta by Sébastien Beun
Captured during an exceptional tidal event in Venice, this photograph documents the serene yet dramatic moment the Adriatic Sea began to reclaim the city streets. As sirens signaled a 135 cm tide peak, the photographer ventured toward Piazza San Marco to witness the water quietly invading the historic pavements. Utilizing a long exposure, the image transforms the rising tide into a mirror-like surface, reflecting the haunting beauty of the submerged city. This work is award-worthy for its atmospheric tension and the technical precision required to balance the low-light conditions of a Venetian night with the fluid, ethereal movement of the encroaching water.
Adriaan Pretorius
Born in South Africa, but currently living in Kuwait, Adriaan Pretorius expresses his love for food as a passion and an opportunity to bring people together from all walks of live. He loves to travel to various parts of the world to experience each unique food culture. He says: "The best part getting to know a food culture is to experience straight from the street markets". Current Location Kuwait Website https://www.lightandcomposition.com/adriaan-pretorius/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/adriaan.pretorius.3785/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/plate_it_right/ Best Achievements & Exhibitions Light & Composition Photo of the Day Award Award Winner Photo of the Day Camera Nikon D5600 Lenses and Gears Sigma DC 18-200mm 1:3.5 – 6.3II HSM, Nikon AF-P NIKKOR 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6G, Nikkon AF-S NIKKOR 50mm 1:1.8G, Tripod Vivitar VPT-1200
Resonance Score Breakdown
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Expert Photography Reviews · 3
The Mirror of Quiet Tides
There is a profound grace in the way water seeks its own level, moving with a patience that humans rarely possess. When the world grows loud and the earth feels solid beneath our feet, we forget that everything is in a state of flux.
Read the reflection →The Salt on the Skin
The smell of damp stone always brings me back to the basement of my childhood home, where the walls wept with the humidity of a long, forgotten summer. It is a thick, mineral scent—the smell of earth trying to reclaim what we have built upon it.
Read the reflection →Reviews & Comments
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At f/5.6, the 24mm focal plane renders the Piazza’s stone textures with clinical sharpness, yet it’s the long exposure that truly fascinates. By integrating thirty seconds of photon data, Beun has smoothed the Adriatic’s turbulence into a perfect, low-pass filter. The diffraction of light across that mirror-like surface is, in the strictest physical sense, extraordinary. I’ve stared at these reflections for an hour; it’s haunting how the lens resolves a stillness the human eye simply cannot perceive.
Venice’s rising tide is a haunting sight, but I can’t help but look for the life displaced by this surge. Where are the rats, the insects, or the birds forced from their roosts by this 135 cm intrusion? It’s technically polished, sure, but it feels sterile. I’ve spent nights in freezing marshes waiting for a heron to blink; this feels like an extraction of beauty, ignoring the raw, messy reality of the ecosystem’s distress.
Most would have retreated to a warm bar when the sirens wailed, but Beun clearly didn’t. Standing in freezing, rising Adriatic salt water for a thirty-second exposure isn’t exactly a holiday. I’ve spent enough nights shivering in damp boots to appreciate the commitment here. The stillness of that reflection is worth the inevitable pneumonia. It’s a rare, earned quietude. One suspects he didn’t just stumble upon this; he waited for the city to drown.