Art teacher Amanda Brewer is not a professional photographer, yet she has managed to catch what might be the most riveting and frightening picture of a Great White Shark ever taken.
The photo was captured while Amanda stood inside a shark-diving cage off the coast of South Africa.
Brewer originally posted the photo to Instagram where it received more than 350,000 likes, not bad for a non-professional who spends their time teaching grades 1-5.
The photo, pictured above, shows a great white shark with its ferocious teeth displayed as it opens its jaws to lunge at two fish heads.
Once posted almost every shark devoted Facebook page shared the photograph, commenting on its incredible composition. While many fans have emerged, others have commented on how close the bait was to the metal cage.
The photo was captured while Amanda Brewer was visiting South Africa as part of an eco-tourism and research group called White Shark Africa.
Speaking to GrindTV, Amanda said she was an intern with the group, helping them collect scientific data about sharks. Her work included taking unique markings for ID purpose, and observing a sharks behavior.
The school teacher says she didn’t even own a camera before her trip, but purchased a GoPro just days before she left for her volunteer work. When she captured the photo she was wearing a mask, but no scuba gear, and she had only submerged the cage partially in the water.
Speaking of her incredibly viral photo shoot, she admits that the Shark, “came out of nowhere and just kind of lunged out of the water, and I just happened to have had my GoPro in the exact right place at the exact right time. It really was just luck.”
The photo was chosen among 30 quick images that were taken with her GoPro’s burst mode. Because the GoPro didn’t feature a screen, she had no idea what was actually captured during the momentary event.
Even before she posted the photo Brewer admits, “Immediately it was, ‘Oh my goodness. Everybody take a look, I think I really got something here. This photo is really gonna do something.’”
In response to critics of the cage bait, Brewer says the food source for the sharks is never pulled directly into the cage, but rather is placed so researchers at White Shark Africa can observe unique markings.
“The person was pulling the bait around and out of the way of the cage [to Brewer’s right] so that shark wouldn’t go near the cage at all,” Brewer said. “That’s one thing that we learned right off the bat, is that you never want the shark to make contact with the cage.
Despite the controversy, the photo has managed to thrill hundreds of thousands of internet users, and has quickly become one of the most viral internet shared photos of all-time.