I broke the world record for the deepest underwater photoshoot, here’s how

Steve Haining is a record-breaking underwater photographer who has redefined the limits of underwater creativity. In his latest feat, he led a world-record-breaking shoot, capturing stunning images of a model at 163 feet. Reaching beyond the no-decompression limit, it’s an area few divers ever explore, let alone photo shoots.

This ambitious project involved a year of preparation, meticulous planning, and a highly skilled team to overcome sharks and jellyfish. DIYP was lucky to catch up with Steve to ask him more about his latest groundbreaking achievement.

DIYP: What makes this underwater photo shoot a world record?

Steve: So it’s the world’s record for the deepest underwater model photo shoot. It’s the first time a photo shoot has happened beyond the no decompression limit, which is a combination of depth and time. So for most divers, the maximum depth is 130ft, about 40m, and the time spent at that depth is about ten minutes. So that’s where the record was. And so to go beyond that meant going past the no decompression limit, having to do stage decompression, ascent. And that adds a whole bunch more complication to the project.

So our shoot, 163ft, about almost 50m, was 15 minutes on set, and it was 20 minutes of decompression to get out of that spot. So the amount of pressure that we were dealing with down there meant that it took longer to get out of the water safely than it did to actually do the shoot.

DIYP: Can you explain the decompression limit and the process a little?

Steve: So as you go deeper underwater, there’s more atmospheres of pressure. The more pressure, the more nitrogen it pushes into your body, and then your body retains nitrogen. And so the deeper you go, the more nitrogen gets absorbed into your body and the more that you’re dealing with that as you go out.

So most dive practitioners, most professional divers and dive masters, and even deep specialists don’t go beyond the no-decompression limit. They stay at a depth where they can enjoy more time and then go up. But knowing that we were going past that, we were mixing our air supply with tri-mix, which is adding helium to it to have less nitrogen while we’re down there.

It also helps with not getting narcosis, which is, as you go deeper, it’s kind of like sleeping or laughing gas, where it makes you drowsy and can make your vision blurry. It can impair your judgment. So, we are adding helium. We were able to alleviate that to some extent. And then, on the way up, as you’re going out of those atmospheres of pressure, you need to stop at certain depths for a certain amount of time.

DIYP: How did you prepare for this shoot?

Steve: The shoot was, a year in planning. First finding the location that had the least amount of current, but still looked the way we wanted it. Then, figuring out what the decompression plan was going to be and how much air we needed to bring. Because as you go down into the higher pressure areas, the air you breathe out of the tank stays partially compressed, which means you’re using air a lot faster, too.

So, once we decided on the wreck, I realized it was an uncommon dive site. There’s documentation, but because the deepest point of that wreck is deeper than where most people can go, there’s not a lot of photography of it. So I had drawings and graphics of it and a couple of photos. So, it was a combination of photos and nautical charts that showed the depth in different spots. But then there are also visual images of the wreck. The original plan was to be towards the stern and have the wheelhouse structure in the background.

When we first got there, I did a dive with Ray, one of my safety divers, to tie ourselves to the wreck first because we had to make a connection from our boat to the wreck so everybody had safety, but also to figure out if all this planning that I’d done from photos and graphics would actually work down there. What we learned is that the wheelhouse had collapsed quite a bit, and it wasn’t as towering as I had hoped. So, we ended up changing the location to the front of the ship. After that, I went back onto the boat and pointed locations out to the model, like: “You’re going to be here, I’m going to be here and here.” I put a different coloured light on my camera so she knew where I was because once she was at those depths, she wouldn’t be able to see past a couple of metres.

DIYP: Tell us more about Ciara the model, what training did she need to do the shoot?

Steve: Ciara spent a year training with tech divers to get to the level that everybody was at so that she felt comfortable. When she came to Florida to meet all of us, she practised with the team and me for a month.

The trust within our team was crucial. Sierra’s dedication was remarkable—she trained extensively and trusted us fully. Her breath-holding skills were impressive, though we prioritized safety over limits.

In the photos, she’s got a hidden weight belt. There are about 16 pounds of weight on her waist just to sink. When you’re that deep, you sink anyway, like you’re under pressure. But if she’s taking a big, big breath of air, she might start floating up a little. And so, to keep her from drifting away from the team, we had a weight belt on her.

But we’ve got so Wayne who has her who’s also on the record was her direct air supply. And I’m no less than, ten feet from her as well. I’m shooting with a wider lens to be able to get more of the structure in the photo and also as a backup if I need to rush over there quickly, I’m quite close.

DIYP: How do you direct a model underwater?

Steve: This project combined my love for diving and photography. My portrait photography is mostly commercial editorial. I work for record labels, TV, and other stuff like that. That’s where I started my career, and it grew from there. I started diving in 2015, just as something to do.

When I shoot, I normally direct somebody, and I move things around quite quickly. And you can change the power of things on your camera. But underwater, you lose the ability to art direct in person. If you want to change the location, you have to move yourself because the model doesn’t know you’re repositioning or doesn’t know to turn a different way.

The lighting is the same. You have to use hand signals to whoever’s holding the lights to move them around. So it’s all done on the surface before you go down, like, “This is where you are, focus here. I’m looking here and here. Lights are going to be here and here”.

Diving is mostly communicated by hand signals so there’s already this simple language. We have a few additional hand signals specifically for photography that we use, and then we also have Wet Notes which is like a chalkboard you can clip onto your wrist. So you can physically write a note to somebody and tap them and be like, “hey, this is what I mean.”

There are ways to communicate, but again, it slows the whole process down. When you’re at that depth, you know, every minute that you’re down could be two minutes of decompressing on the way up. So it ends up being two minutes of dive time.

DIYP: What challenges did you face during the shoot?

Steve: The dive was supposed to happen the day prior, on December 18th. And then the day we were ready to go, the waves in the ocean were eight feet, really big. So we pushed it back a day and we did another practice day, which I think was the best decision.

Then we did that first dive to tie the wreck and do the recon. And at the surface, when we got there, there were fishermen baiting the water. They’re not supposed to do that on shipwrecks, you’re not supposed to go chum water. But, because I think it’s an uncommon place, they didn’t expect anybody to ever be there.

When we went down, there was this big tiger shark and a couple of other reef sharks. But the tiger, the big tiger sharks that kind of linger, especially if somebody is beating the water, is something to be concerned with. But when we did the actual dive, that shark had gone.

On the actual dive, we sent Ciara with two of the safety divers ahead to go down and make sure they went nice and slow so that she felt good. Then I hopped in my tank disc, and the bolt snap disconnected from the tank, and so I’m going down and my one tank is flying up. And then, when I went to reach to grab it, there was a jellyfish that had passed by, and it went over my hands, mostly over my wetsuit. But it was enough that it caught me off guard.

I didn’t know what it was at first, but that was what went wrong. And we still had that huge distance to descend to the wreck. So I managed to take the bottom of my tank apart, clip everything back together, and get it onto my BCD before we reached the bottom.

And I found out after that Ciarra got stung too because she said, when we were regrouping on the surface, “I think I got stung by something.”

And I was like, “oh yeah,” because I forgot that happened to me. I got in photo mode and forgot!

DIYP: Let’s talk about gear for a moment. How do you prep your camera for those depths?

Steve: I used the Fujifilm XH2S on this one. I really wanted to use the gfx 100, and I was talking about taking one on loan, but we couldn’t have a housing that would go that deep. The housing I did use for the XH2S was not meant for beyond 130ft.

I made a bunch of really unprofessional modifications. I changed out some O-rings and added a different type of grease to them to make them seal a little bit better. I put dish sponges with a bit of thick adhesive side in between the buttons and the camera so that if the spring started to squeeze, which had depth under pressure, it wouldn’t start just pushing all the buttons on me. If you looked at the set up, you’d laugh. Ultimately it worked. I’d say if you have that housing and you’re trying to go that deep, do it at your own risk. It’s not designed for it, but I did tweak a couple of things, and it held up the entire time there were no leaks.

DIYP: And how did you light the shoot? How did you create realistic colours underwater?

Steve: We were lucky because it was a sunny day. I did bring two different types of light: video lights and flashes. Flash photography has to be done through fiber optics underwater because radio signals slow down in the water. So if you use the radio signal, it’s not even going to reach the camera, so fiber optic flashes were the main thing.

We also had cave torches, like, really powerful lights for diving. So, the natural light coming down from the surface is not going to be that great. It might fill it really nicely, but you’re going to have no contrast or texture.

And then the other problem is that every about ten meters or so, you start to really lose color. You lose red almost immediately, by ten, 15 metres the reds are already really faded. The depth that we were the only colors that are visible are gray and blue.

Being able to have those torches to bring back the green and the red of the shipwreck and to make her dress actually appear white and her skin appear healthy is important.

DIYP: What’s next? Any new record-breaking projects on the horizon?

Steve: The shared commitment and camaraderie made this experience unforgettable. As soon as we surfaced, the dive crew was already discussing ideas for the next challenge—a deeper wreck, a more complex setup. This project reaffirmed our passion for exploring and creating in ways that defy expectations, driven by the joy of doing what we love and sharing it with others.

You can see more of Steve’s amazing diving work on Instagram.

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