The man who took the picture above was upside down in the water – with his companions holding his ankles – so he could capture this encounter with a great white shark.

Gary Porter captured this frame as the 4m (13ft) shark swam straight towards him, backing off only when it came within two metres of his camera.

The four men were on a diving expedition off Kapiti Island, close to Wellington, New Zealand, and were just about to enter the water when they spotted the great white heading towards them. They thought better of going for a swim but soon, emboldened by the shark’s apparent lack of aggression, Mr Porter dipped his arms into the sea to take underwater photos with a waterproof digital camera. After taking about 50 shots, he had still failed to get a decent one. So he told his friends to grab his legs as he plunged head and body into the ocean, still gripping the camera.

The result was an astonishing head-on shot of the kind usually only captured by highly trained and experienced underwater photographers.

After getting his shot, Mr Porter resurfaced and threw the shark one of the fish that they had harpooned during their fishing trip as a reward.

Mr Porter may have got close enough to count every tooth in the shark’s massive jaws, but in all probability it never saw him. Sharks have notoriously poor eyesight, and their attacks on human beings are amost always a case of mistaken identity.

Experienced marine photographers are careful to venture into shark-infested waters only when they know that the sharks are feeding in the shallows, and not lurking deep below where they might mistake a swimmer for something more tasty. The reason surfers are vulnerable is because the shape of their boards resembles a seal.

“Nine times out of ten great whites will attack from below,” Cavan Pawson, a marine photographer, said. “They see a silhouette above and they swim up at 30 miles an hour, thinking it’s a seal. They really don’t have very good eyesight. In fact, it’s actually quite hard to take a shark’s picture because they are really very shy.”

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