He looked into the eyes of death to capture the smile of one of the most ruthless killers on the planet!

Undoubtedly, working with predators always requires nerves of steel, courage and inhuman endurance. This is known firsthand by the Australian photographer Matthew Smith, who managed to take a truly impressive picture of one of the scariest and ruthless killers on earth - a huge crocodile. To do this, Smith in a simple wetsuit, armed with only one camera, dived into the water teeming with crocodiles near the archipelago of Jardines de la Reina (Queen's Gardens), located in southern Cuba.

“You don’t often remember exactly the moment the shutter button was pressed, but I remember everything about those few seconds of my life,” Smith says. “I remember looking at the lens, focusing, the warmth of the water, my heart beating in my chest and sweat on the head. " The moment when the crocodile was just a few centimeters from his lens, Matthew describes it as very sobering.

Note that Matthew Smith was only one of 12 Australians whose works were awarded at the 2015 EPSON International Pano Awards. This unforgettable, dangerous meeting brought him the 2nd place among the winners.