rooftop

5 Reasons I Love Rooftopping and Will Do It Until The Day I Die

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.

5 Reasons Why I’m F***ing Done With Rooftopping

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.

These Photographs of Parisian Rooftops Look Like Abstract Paintings

Despite living in one of the most photographed locations on earth, Michael Wolf has never been short of creative, unique ideas. Be it photographing street view scenes or, in this case, showing off his incredible composition skill with photographs of Parisian rooftops that look like two-dimensional, abstract paintings.

Rooftop Photo from the 1920s May be the First Group Selfie in History

We've shared what we believe to be the first ever selfie in history, but we've never had occasion to share the photograph you see being taken in the image above. Taken in the 1920s on a rooftop in New York City, what you see being captured might very well be the first ever group selfie... although we're pretty sure they didn't call it that.

BTS: Photographing From Urban Heights with Russian Daredevil Rooftoppers

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.

Gorgeous “Rooftopping” Photography of Toronto in Time-Lapse Form

Toronto-based photographer Tom Ryaboi is one of the godfathers of "rooftopping", which involves climbing to the tops of skyscrapers, pointing a camera off an edge, and capturing cities from high perspectives that most people never experience. It's an activity that's not for the faint of heart; rooftoppers sometimes even dangle their feet off the edge of buildings.

Over the past year, Ryaboi has been working hard at combining rooftopping photography with his newfound passion of time-lapse photography. The result of his efforts was City Rising, the gorgeous time-lapse video seen above (be sure to watch it in HD).