One World Trade Center was finished in New York City last Fridy after the final section of the spire was hoisted up and installed. The skyscraper is now the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere and the third tallest building in the world based on pinnacle height.
To document and celebrate the completion of the tower, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey decided to fix a GoPro camera to the final spire section as it was hoisted up and installed. With its fisheye lens pointed straight down, the camera managed to capture some crazy footage (shown above) of what it looks like to be hanging 1,776 feet in the air. Read more…
Rooftopping photography is a dangerous new fad in which daredevils climb to extremely high (and often off-limits) urban locations in order to shoot vertigo-inducing photographs. Two of the most famous practitioners in the world right now are Vadim Mahorov and Vitaliy Yakhnenko, two young Russian daredevils who have attracted a great deal of attention for their images (they’re the same guys who recently snuck to the top of Egypt’s Great Pyramid).
If you want to see how the duo works, check out the short 6-minute documentary film above (warning: there’s a bit of strong language). It’s titled “Roofer’s Point of View,” and was created by HUB Footwear. Read more…
A Ukranian daredevil who goes by Mustang Wanted is taking the concept one step further: rather than simply climbing to high locations and photographing his feet on the edge, the 26-year-old man poses for portraits while hanging off edges by his arms and by his legs. The concept could be described as, “skyhanging.” Read more…
Rooftopping photography enthusiasts enjoy climbing to locations that would make most people’s legs turn to jelly, pointing a camera straight down, and snapping a photo that commonly shows feet, a ledge, and a huge drop. While in Dubai for Gulf Photo Plus 2013, famed National Geographic photographer Joe McNally managed to snap the mother of all rooftopping photos, seen above. The Instagram snap was captured from the tip of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest manmade structure in the world. Read more…
For those of you who need to snap eye-level photographs of giraffes: Taiwanese gear manufacturer Fishbone has launched a crazy new tripod that literally reaches new heights of image stabilization. Called the Tree-pod, the tripod is designed for capturing photos or videos from way up off the ground. Dan Chung of DSLR News Shooter writes,
The device, otherwise know as the Zhezhi tripod, can reach 3.3m high, weighs about 13 kg and folds to about 90 cm long. It is aluminium alloy in construction and costs a cool $6000 US. In order to position and level the tripod head you can scale the Tree-pod in a similar way to a telegraph pole. Not sure I would trust it myself, but if heights are your thing then maybe it’s worth it.
3.3m is roughly 10.8 feet. The Tree-pod has attachable rungs that allow you to climb up it as if it were a ladder. Uses for it could include getting closer to the moon if your telephoto lens doesn’t have enough reach, and cleaning your home’s gutters when not doing photography.
For his project Life on the Edge, Detroit-based photographer Dennis Maitland seeks out high locations for vertigo-inducing shots of his feet dangling off the edges. Rather than use a remote shutter release, he captures all his photographs by hand. Once an acrophobe, Maitland now craves the adrenaline that comes from doing his photography. Read more…
The photographs in Adam Magyar‘s Square series appear to show crowds of people bustling about in open town squares, seen from a height that makes them look almost like ants. In reality, each photograph is actually a composite of hundreds of individual photos, and none of the squares actually exist. Magyar photographed strangers walking on sidewalks from only 3-4 meters off the ground, and then blended the photographs together to make them seem like they were captured from a fake height! Read more…
When we shared the practice of “rooftopping” (climbing to the tops of skyscrapers and taking pictures from the edge) a couple days ago, some commenters pointed out that accidentally dropping your camera could kill someone on the ground. Well, Reuters photographer Mark Blinch had a “rooftopping” adventure of his own recently at the CN Tower in Toronto, which just launched an attraction called “EdgeWalk” that lets you walk hands free 356m (1,168ft) off the ground. Blinch describes how the crew secured his gear:
The morning started when the tower’s safety personnel attached all manner of clips and cables to my cameras so they could fasten them securely to the bright red jumpsuit they gave us to wear. I brought up a Canon 5d Mark II with a 16-35 wide zoom, and a Nikon D3s with a 24-70. The memory card slots, eyepiece, and battery doors of both cameras were all taped down to make sure nothing fell off. I have dropped a camera maybe once or twice in my life, and I knew this wouldn’t be the time to have an accident.
If you’re planning on doing any kind of photography where butterfingers could kill more than your camera, you might want to try this method of tape, clips, and cables.
