roof

If there are still photojournalists around in the year 2030, they'll be begging their editors to buy this strange concept car designed by Dillion Kane. Like the ultimate gear bag on wheels, it'll carry your cameras, scan the environment with myriad sensors, and houses its very own drone in the roof.

Here's something super random that caught our attention: the new stadium for the Atlanta Falcons football team features an innovative roof design that seems to be inspired by the world of photography: it opens and closes like an 8-blade camera lens aperture.

The word "rooftopping" first appeared in a book called "Access All Areas" in 2005 by author Jeff Chapman. In this book Jeff refers to this activity as an offshoot of urban exploration. It's been called skywalking, roofing, and most recently New York Magazine called the people who do this "outlaw Instagrammers.”

Call it what you will, people have been going on roofs for decades (and probably even longer) for their own reasons, from Dan Goodwin's stunts to Philippe Petit's rope walk across the World Trade Center towers. Exploring rooftops is nothing new.

So it has been an amazing run. I owe a lot to my 'rooftopping' adventures. I've sold prints, had gallery shows, been on TV, in magazines, on the front page of the Toronto Star, and most importantly the rest of my work got more attention as a by-product of it. People really seemed interested - they liked these types of images and the attention was nice. It is hard to turn away the likes and faves. It was addicting to an insecure photographer just starting a new career in photography. Rooftopping was my security blanket.

On September 2nd, a woman in Northern California named Debbie Payne heard a loud crash and, upon investigating, found a smashed Canon 24-105mm lens on the ground and a gaping 9-inch hole in her roof. Now the police department in Petaluma is trying to figure out how the lens apparently fell from the sky.