Underwater Portraits of People Diving Into a Freezing 4°C Dunking Pool

There was a freezing 4°C (39°F) dunking pool at the freediving world championships in Turku, Finland… and photographer Daan Verhoeven did not want to let it go to waste. As the competitors took their shocking dunk into the freezing cold water, he was there to capture their reactions.

Verhoeven is an award-winning freediver himself, and most of his portraits involve capturing the sport in action. These … well these are just fun.

“I wanted to capture the shock of submerging yourself into water this cold,” he says. “It’s actually quite good fun and pleasant, but only afterwards. The initial feeling is overwhelmingly… well, shocking!”

Given how cold this pool is (and my own brief experience with a dunking pool just like this) I’m just shocked so many of the divers were able to keep such straight faces! Scroll down to see the whole series:

To see more of Daan’s work—including some of the less silly, more ethereal portraits of freedivers in action—head over to his website or give him a follow on Instagram.

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Image credits: Photographs by Daan Verhoeven and used with permission.

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