National Geographic photographer and filmmakers do some pretty crazy stuff and use some pretty crazy gear in order to capture the perfect shot. They’re the type of people who see a large shark and, instead of fleeing the scene, think to themselves, “we should attach a camera to that thing.” And then they actually do it.
Mounting cameras on sharks is risky business, though, and the video above shows just how dangerous it can be. In it, marine biologist Greg Marshall tells of his first attempt at deploying his camera onto the back of a large shark back in 1992. It didn’t go according to plan. Read more…
If the movie Jaws gave you nightmares, then you’re probably not well-suited to do the kind of photography that photographer Michael Muller spends his free time doing. Muller dives into the ocean and snaps close-up portraits of deadly sharks, often without a cage for protection. The video above is a short feature on Muller’s pastime by the TV show “Last Call With Carson Daly.” Read more…
Everyone knows you shouldn’t leave DSLRs unattended in public places on land, but did you know that the same is true for when you’re shooting on the ocean floor? In the video above, one unlucky diver leaves his DSLR rig sitting on the ocean floor while swimming with sharks, only to have a klepto tiger shark swipe it and swim away.
Apparently tiger sharks have a thing for cameras: here’s another video that shows what it’s like to be gobbled up by a shark and then spit out.
P.S. Can anyone identify the rig and/or the camera being used?
What’s with underwater photographers getting mugged by large sea creatures these days? Dutch photographer Karin Brussaard was doing ocean photography off the Bahamas recently when a 7-foot-long shark decided to grab her DSLR camera rig and swim off. Luckily, like the other animal thieves we’ve written on in the past, the shark decided to drop the rig a little while later relatively undamaged. What’s even cooler is that they managed the capture the above shot of the klepto shark.
Chuck Patterson was SUP surfing with friends one day when two sharks joined them and circled around for 15 minutes. Rather than have the encounter deter them from surfing there again like it would for mortals, he returned to the same place the next day at the same time with a Go Pro HD HERO camera at the end of 10 foot pole.
Within 5 minutes a Great White shark approached him, and this time he was able to capture the encounter on film. The footage is pretty creepy, and reminded me of a Godzilla movie I saw when I was younger, where a scuba-diver runs into a freaky looking Godzilla-tadpole thing underwater. No ocean swimming for me.
