Hollywood photographer Michael Muller credits his wife for his love affair with sharks. Although he has been a diver since age 10, he hadn’t deliberately sought them out until she gifted him a great white expedition to Guadalupe, Mexico, on his 36th birthday. The next day he called to secure a spot. That was the beginning of an image collection that will be published this month in his new Taschen book, Sharks.

Q: Tell us about your first shark encounter.

Muller: It was the first one in the water at 5:30 in the morning. When I locked eyes with that first great white, I was hooked. Right away, I hated being in the cage. It felt claustrophobic and I wanted out. But, that day, if they had said, “The door’s open, go swim,” I wouldn’t have. I didn’t have the experience. But the desire was born. Years later, and I’ve been free swimming with great whites, bulls, oceanic whitetips — all the species you see in the book.

Q: You’ve redefined expectations of shark imagery. Where did that inspiration come from?

MM: After that Guadalupe trip, I went back to my day job and realized I wanted to light up a great white like I would in the studio. But you can’t bring a shark to the studio or it’d be dead. I had to bring the studio to the sharks.

Q: How so?

MM: Lights. At the time, only HMI movie lights or 400-watt strobes were available for underwater shooting. Neither would work. I met a photographer who understood what I was looking for. I paid him tens of thousands of dollars in advance. In the end, he sent me a metal box with a hole cut in it. I started crying when I saw it. I wouldn’t even trust something that crude to work in the pool. I almost gave up. But when I met someone else, someone who had confidence in building surf housings, I said OK. This time, I paid only a quarter of the fee up front.

Q: Did that prototype work?

MM: Around that time, I’d been photographing IWC watches on actors, not asking anything in return. Shortly thereafter, I met the president of IWC and showed him my work. I also told him about the lights I was working on. He gave me the Aquatimer campaign on the spot. His employees looked at him like he was crazy, giving it to a Hollywood photographer and not an underwater guy like David Doubilet. Luckily, the day before we were set to leave for the shoot in the Galapagos, the lights arrived.

Q: You invested so much in this lighting concept. Why?

MM: If you show someone a shark coming out of light, they are going to stop and absorb that image. My goal was to get people to stop, to educate them to the fact that we kill hundreds of millions of sharks a year.

Q: To that end, you went to great lengths to secure a jaw-dropping photo in South Africa.

MM: At the time, nobody knew if great whites breached at night, but my gut said they did. It was the last morning of the last day of a trip in 2015 when I saw white water — that’s all you can see at first. I waited a tenth of a second to press the shutter.

And I got it breaching. That picture that had been in my head for years. It took two years, two trips, 10 days at sea, and close to $100,000 in crew, gear and boats to capture this image nobody had ever seen. It was one of the top 10 moments of my photo career. I experienced a level of fulfillment that I hadn’t felt before in my life.

Jaws-Dropper

Not everyone has the budget — or guts — to travel the world and swim with sharks. Luckily, Michael Muller is bringing his experiences to you. His book, Sharks. Face-to-Face with the Ocean’s Endangered Predator includes incredible images and essays by Philippe Cousteau Jr., Dr. Alison Kock and Arty Nelson. Hardcover with foldouts; 11-by-14.6 inches; 334 pages; $69.99