I mentioned in my story that I had a photo I wanted to share today, then I realized there were actually a few. These are some behind the scenes photos from my last post. Which, by the way, I was so blown away by the many kind responses and comments I received; thank you so much for your thoughtful words and support on that video 💙⁣ ⁣ Pictured above is an image @chau1988 took while I was filming the sequence of the shark swimming above me. My legs are tucked up because I exhaled my air and sunk below the surface to film (instead of diving down) because I didn’t want to excite the shark. Sometimes diving can rile an Oceanic up, so I chose to sink to get my footage instead because it significantly reduces my movements and I hoped to keep her calm so she didn’t expend energy unnecessarily.⁣ ⁣ The 3rd photo is cropped in on the first. It shows she and I were making eye contact. Maybe it makes me a bad videographer, but my eyes are usually on my subject and not on the screen in front of me. Subtle nuances and body language are important for me to notice because wild animals can turn on a dime. Sometimes you only get a small fin flex before an animal charges. I’m hypersensitive in the water, watching each of my subject’s movements and usually communicating with my own - sometimes it’s important to be passive, other times is imperative to be dominant. ⁣ ⁣ The last two photos are of the plastic we pulled off of her as well as a length of fishing line we’d cut off another shark that day but didn’t document. You can see barnacles were growing on the plastic wrapped around her neck, indicating it’d been there a while. Thankfully, sharks have a strong immune system so we’re hoping she survived 💙