How I Shoot: Underwater Shark Photography with @michaelmuller7
For each How I Shoot, we ask an Instagrammer to tell us about their creative process. To see more of Michael’s photos from his shark expeditions, follow @michaelmuller7 and follow @discoverychannel as Michael takes over Discovery Channel’s Instagram account during Shark Week.
Michael Muller (@michaelmuller7) is on a mission to change the way we see sharks. “They are in a lot of trouble right now,” he says. “100 million are slaughtered every year, and I say slaughter because the majority of the time the shark is killed just for its fins.”
In his day job, Michael is a Hollywood-based commercial photographer renowned for his celebrity portraits and images used in box office billboards. But when he has free time, Michael devotes himself to documenting sharks in their native habitat around the world. He has even created an underwater strobe lighting system as powerful as the one in his California studio. “Realizing that I couldn’t bring the shark into the studio, I knew I would have to bring the studio to it,” he says.
The key to successful underwater shark photography, according to Michael, is staying relaxed. “Anxiety is the biggest obstacle,” he says. “If you let negative thoughts take hold then you are in for a really rough time.”
Michael uses Instagram to share images of his encounters in the deep. Here he tells us more about his process during and after his underwater excursions:
Equipment:
Phase One medium format with Nauticam, Nikon D800 with Subal Housing, Red Epic Dragon, GoPro and a “list of scuba equipment too long to enumerate.”
Vantage Point:
Because Michael rarely shoots from insides shark cages, he works closely with a team to be in the best position possible. “I have to constantly anticipate where the animal may go or do. What we look for always is what we call a ‘player,’which is a shark that is very mellow and curious that will stay around us. It is with sharks like this that magic happens.”
Shooting:
“It’s all about waiting for that right ‘moment’ to hit the trigger, which comes from 28 years experience. If you get too excited and go too fast then you miss that moment. If you wait too long you watch it happen and have the shot in your head, but no one else ever gets to witness it, so timing is everything.“
Editing:
Depending on the length of the shoot, Michael will return with between 3,000-10,000 photos. “I keep every image I take, I get rid of blank images but keep everything else,” he says. “With Instagram I usually post between 4-8 images from a particular trip.” For processing tools, Michael uses his own custom filters app MullerPhoto, and also the newest Instagram creative tools. “There are times I just go right into Instagram and just use its tools which are really getting more and more phenomenal.”
More than 170 sharks were caught during a heinous and cruel cull policy in western Australia. Of those, around 50 sharks were murdered. And it was all legal as Australia embarked on the killing spree after a handful of fatal attacks took place in the country over the past two years.
Conservationists rightly charged the government of going against…
(2015)The female prisoners in full make up, beaters, and jean shorts? Just poking their shovels into the ground when they’re supposed to be “removing stumps”? A cop that doesn’t know how to hold a gun? The acting? Standing in the pouring rain with OPEN cups of coffee as if the rain isn’t just flooding it? Shark point of view is legit filmed in the ocean but, it’s suppose to be a swampy ass creek? The casual racism towards the only minority character?
Dark ghost shark(Hydrolagus novaezealandiae) and the pale ghost shark (Hydrolagus bemisi), both are shortnose chimaera of the family Chimaeridae, found on the continental shelf around the South Island of New Zealand in depths from 30 to 850 m.
Both ghost shark species are taken almost exclusively as a bycatch of other target trawl fisheries
To build more aerodynamic machines, researchers are drawing inspiration from an unlikely source: the ocean.
A team of evolutionary biologists and engineers at Harvard University, in collaboration with colleagues from the University of South Carolina, has shed light on a decades-old mystery about sharkskin and, in the process, demonstrated a new, bioinspired structure that could improve the aerodynamic performance of planes, wind turbines, drones, and cars.
The research is published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
Sharks and airplanes aren’t actually all that different. Both are designed to efficiently move through fluid (water and air), using the shapes of their bodies to generate lift and decrease drag. The difference is, sharks have about a 400-million-year head start on the design process.
“The skin of sharks is covered by thousands and thousands of small scales, or denticles, which vary in shape and size around the body,” said George Lauder, the Henry Bryant Bigelow Professor of Ichthyology and professor of biology in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, a co-author of the research. “We know a lot about the structure of these denticles — which are very similar to human teeth — but the function has been debated.”
#kingfish what an incredible catch Reposted from @pennythackwray Pegged a couple good kingys this morning in blue water was not easy lifting these at all arms will definitely be saw tomorrow
So funny thing is that Bullsharks can swim up into fresh water and have been known to swim up the Mississippi River.
I believe the two known shark attacks in Missouri were in the late 1800s.
Oh I forgot about Bull sharks!
The New Mexico one was an extremely minor accident between keeper and shark in the Albaquerque Biopark, but since they had to report an injury, they had to report a shark ‘bite’, even if 'Keeper accidentally shoves arm into shark’s mouth’ was more accurate. Both keeper and shark were fine.
Mojang has reportedly said that “realistic” sharks will not be included in Minecraft because hostile mobs have to be imaginary creatures. Sure! That makes sense! But listen…there’s an obvious solution.
DON’T MAKE SHARKS HOSTILE MOBS
They don’t have to be bloodthirsty enemies and assuming so is to unnecessarily demonize an animal that is an essential part of the ecosystem.
Instead, make them neutral mobs. They will attack only if you’re holding meat or rotten flesh in your hand, or if you get REALLY close to one, and they generally avoid the player so it’s on you if you try to harass the shark.
Here are some other things sharks could do that are based on reality:
Sharks have been found with all sorts of junk in their stomachs. So, you should be able to throw a shark a potion (either a weakness potion or a new one) and make them cough up a variety of junk, including bones, tridents, potentially enchanted books, tools, or….a live chicken.
If you row directly above a shark in a boat, it might bite your boat and cause it to drop as an item.
If a shark bites a hard block like stone, iron, obsidian etc. it will drop shark teeth
Finally:Sharks attack Drowned. The Drowned are made of rotting flesh! A shark would smell that and be drawn to it. So you’d want to have them around to keep the Drowned population down
Instead of assuming sharks would have to be hostile, create gameplay that shows them as creatures that have the right to exist and rewards the player for respecting them
The Goblin shark extends its jaw way out in front of its body, then snaps it back to catch food. The jaw is suspended by ligaments, and not connected to the skull.
