I charge $30,000 to take underwater photographs. This is how I built my career so I could do 2 of those shoots a year.

• Anna Sweet is an underwater photographer and artist.
• She first took photographs underwater with a friend. Then she expanded it to a $30,000-a-shoot role.
• This is how she built her career, as told to journalist Chris Stokel-Walker.

I grew up in an art gallery. My mom was a painter, but I didn’t seem to have the patience for painting. So she handed me a camera when I was 12. I started photographing my sister, and I soon became enamored.

When I was studying photography at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, I saw a photograph of a woman levitating – almost falling but suspended in space. It reminded me of “Alice in Wonderland.”

I thought, “How can I re-create this?” Then it came to me: In a pool, I could have the model falling without obviously falling.