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Hamilton photographer breaks world record for deepest underwater model photoshoot

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A Hamilton photographer dove to dangerous depths to capture images that broke a world record, for the third time.

In breaking this record for the deepest underwater model photoshoot, the photographer and his team pushed the limits of creativity and human capability.

The haunting images offer just a glimpse of the danger, hard work, and training that the photographer Steve Haining and his team endured for the sake of creating art at 163 feet deep.

“The deepest you could go in the ‘no decompression zone’ is 130 feet, for about 10 minutes and we went to 163 feet for 15 minutes of bottom time,” says Haining.

The Hamilton native has made history again by setting a new Guinness World Record for the deepest underwater model photoshoot conducted beyond the “no-compression” limit of scuba diving – something that takes immense training for all involved.

“For a professional diver 130 feet is your limit and there’s very few people in the world that can dive past that,” Haining explained. “Of all divers, maybe 5 per cent can go beyond that.”

Unlike his other record breaking underwater shoots, this one took place in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Florida in December.

The woman in the photos is the model Ciara Antoski, who worked with Haining on the original shoot that broke the world record and wanted to undergo even more dive training to go deeper and do it again.

Her oxygen tank in the photos were not removed using any digital editing software – she actually took it off for the photos, with a nearby crew member giving her aid when she needed it.

“If it doesn’t feel right to any of us, we are just going to go home, we always need to make sure that 100 per cent: everyone is safe and 100 per cent: Ciara is safe, because at the end of the day she has a lot of trust in us,” the photographer said.

Haining says that pushing the limits is what the record breaking shoot was all about.

“When I started shooting underwater, you started eliminating all the stuff that made me good at my job – so all these challenges started stacking up and I fell in love with the idea of being uncomfortable in the thing I’m normally good at,” says Haining.

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