Photographing the World’s Biggest Shark | National Geographic

as a professional filmmaker and
photographer Tom Campbell pursues light
and motion but under the sea he must
also predict the behavior of a wild
animal
there’s an area that you can’t call the
shot you don’t know what the animal is
going to do so you make a calculated
risk and you depend on your experience
and your training and your abilities of
photographer but you’ve always got that
overwhelming desire to get that picture
Ningaloo reef Western Australia
whale sharks are the largest fish in the
sea
and can grow to more than 30 feet long
to showcase their enormous size Tom
needs something or someone in the frame
that someone is a drew Ross who didn’t
learn to scuba dive until she turned 50
the trip to Australia was a great way to
start my diving experience I knew it was
going to be something sterling and
exciting as a seasoned professional tom
knows he can’t force the magic but he’s
always ready
suddenly he sees his chance as a shark
starting to swim away we suddenly saw he
opened up his mouth in this school of
yellow fish that was below him moved
right up into the center of his mouth
Tom and aedra kick into high gear and
swim hard to overtake the whale shark
she’s swimming as hard as you can and I
needed to catch up with the shark
pushing the camera helping and while I
was swimming I had to set the distance I
had to set the f-stop to the light
factor and I had to get everything set
up on the lens just right I swam ahead
of the shark got to the point where I
could turn around but just enough time
to squeeze the shutter so I got one shot
squeeze it off and that was it Tom’s
single frame proved to be a winner
the light was right the animal was there
the diver was in position I got that
split second they captured some kind of
magic and it was a killer shot