A photo shoot in the waters around Tobermory now has a Guinness World Record.
Photographer Steve Haining, who is from Hamilton, decided to do an underwater photo shoot with model Ciara Antoski posing on the remnants of the Wetmore, in a dress she selected herself.
Because of the conditions of the dive and subsequent photographs, the world record is for the Deepest Underwater Photo Shoot.
The entire shoot was at a depth of 21 feet (6.4 metres) underwater and lasted for 16 minutes.
The photo shoot was actually an idea based on a tongue-in-cheek joke among his crew — they were told by the studio they were working in had strict rules during the pandemic, and the team wondered if they’d be allowed to work if they wore their scuba gear and regulators.
That’s when they realized that they could do a photo shoot underwater, as members of the team were all trained divers, and so in June 2021, they decided to go for it.
Haining and Antoski had worked underwater in pools before, but a new challenge was quickly discovered and then remedied when they were on location.
“We did the test shoot on location at a shallower wreck, and we took the mask from her and everything was blurry, and she’s at depth, and I know that it got her nerves a little bit. But we very quickly learned that if modified, we could have lights on the cameras.”
They decided to do early practice shots by shooting the wreck of the Sweepstakes, but when collaborating with Toronto-based diving trainer Mareesha Klups-Klos, it was recommended that they do their deeper shoot with the W.L. Wetmore.
“She suggested to me a number of different wrecks, and we ended up landing on the Wetmore for the deep one, just because of how beautiful and how intact it was.”
They knew that with Tobermory being the shipwreck capital of Canada, they knew where they wanted to snap photos.
The team modified a regulator to help their subject breathe, in addition to her training to hold her breath underwater, particularly when the water is cold.
The original plan for the photography session also involved a male model.
The model they had chosen was a more experienced diver than Antoski, and also more experienced in cold water, but he didn’t feel he was able to meet the demands of the photo shoot once on location and after having spent time in the water.
Haining says that there was no pressure on anyone to complete the shoot, and they went ahead with their female model, simply with the plan to have fun.
“We rented the boat, we’re down here for the weekend… if it’s too cold, we all dive, so let’s just go for a fun dive and take pictures on our own.”
Haining says that this achievement has now led to a new goal — to complete another photo shoot in September 2023 to complete a shoot between 94 and 100m down.