Things which might distract you while having coffee with a friend: food in their teeth, attractive waiters, giant sharks circling your head.
It’s not a hallucination — this remarkable photograph of two men sharing a drink 30 meters below the water is part of an art project exploring the mysterious world of freediving.
Each man, dressed in shirt, jeans and sunglasses, sits in a chair at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea with local reef sharks — harmless to humans — swimming just meters away
Of course, these aren’t ordinary men, but freedivers: extreme athletes who plumb the depths of the ocean on a single breath of air, sometimes descending more than 100 meters — the equivalent of a 30-storey building — without the use of oxygen tanks.
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American photographer Lia Barrett had been snapping daredevil divers competing at the Caribbean Cup off the coast of Honduras, when she decided to create a surreal underwater world in which humans go about everyday tasks — such as drinking coffee or riding bikes.
«After the competitors reveled in the new national and world records set at the competition, I took advantage of their breath-holding skills to do photo shoots I had only dreamed of before,» said the 29-year-old, originally from Korea.
«A 30 meter descent for these shoots was no great strain on the abilities of these champions who were going deeper than 90 meters during the competition. They were the ideal underwater models.»
Source: edition.cnn.com/2013/08/06/sport/no-its-not-photshopped-freedivers/?hpt=hp_c5
