Underwater grace

Photographer Wayne Levin is at home in the water, and recently dived in with the help of some heavy metal.

He heard about shark-encounter tours out of Haleiwa from friends and decided to test the waters himself. "A couple of friends of mine from Kona tried it and got some interesting pictures of tiger sharks. I saw those and thought, 'I want to try that, too,' " says Levin.

He took three trips between April and August.

"Each time it was very different. The amount of sharks and the types were different," he says. "In April there were about 40 Galapagos sharks. It was more spectacular than I anticipated.

"The third time there were fewer Galapagos, and maybe about 10 sandbar sharks and a few tiger sharks," Levin says.

He was in the water in a large cage he estimates to be about 6 or 7 square feet.

"The fact that you're in a cage made it feel safer. It would be a little different outside a cage," he says. "There's part of you that doesn't want anything between you and the experience, but I was happy with what I got in that cage."

But being in the cage also presented its own difficulty when shooting in the open ocean.

"The cage was really rocking around, so I had to hold on with one hand and hold the camera with the other," Levin says. "I could get better pictures if I dove down to the bottom of the cage. I could get below the stuff floating on the surface of the water."

Levin photographed the sharks using Nikonos V underwater cameras. He carried four or five with him with wide-angle lenses attached. He would shoot a roll of film in one camera, then dive to the surface where he would be handed another camera. This allowed him to shoot uninterrupted for about a half-hour.

Overall the experience was positive for Levin, and he hopes to make more trips in the future. "It's exciting seeing those beautiful animals up close," he says.

More of Levin's work can be seen at his Web site, waynelevinimages.com.