[PHOTO] "Rise of rooftopping photography concerns police"
David Friend's Canadian Press article, hosted by The Globe and Mail, notes the growth of rooftopping photographers. The failure modes of this adventurous style are as noteworthy as the photos. I have not done this, although last summer's photographic expedition around the Scarborough Bluffs might well have come close, especially when I clambered down.
Toronto Police Const. David Hopkinson has arrested his fair share of rooftoppers, a nickname for the daredevil photographers who climb atop skyscrapers to snap vertigo-inducing pictures of the world below.
He expects it’s just a matter of time before one of them in Canada dies.
“We can’t bat 1,000 on this,” he says. “I believe that eventually somebody is going to make a mistake, and it will be a critical one.”
Last year, at least two deaths were linked to rooftopping.
A 17-year-old man fell off a building in Russia and a 24-year-old New Yorker slipped off the roof of the Four Seasons Hotel in Manhattan. In 2012, a photographer died after he fell into a Chicago building’s smokestack.
But despite the obvious dangers, there’s no shortage of photographers willing to take a big risk for a great photo from the top of a bank building, condo tower or the edge of a construction crane.
It was just a few years ago that rooftopping lingered on the fringes of the mainstream in North America, appealing to urban explorers who were already venturing into abandoned buildings, city sewers and subway systems.
Toronto Police Const. David Hopkinson has arrested his fair share of rooftoppers, a nickname for the daredevil photographers who climb atop skyscrapers to snap vertigo-inducing pictures of the world below.
He expects it’s just a matter of time before one of them in Canada dies.
“We can’t bat 1,000 on this,” he says. “I believe that eventually somebody is going to make a mistake, and it will be a critical one.”
Last year, at least two deaths were linked to rooftopping.
A 17-year-old man fell off a building in Russia and a 24-year-old New Yorker slipped off the roof of the Four Seasons Hotel in Manhattan. In 2012, a photographer died after he fell into a Chicago building’s smokestack.
But despite the obvious dangers, there’s no shortage of photographers willing to take a big risk for a great photo from the top of a bank building, condo tower or the edge of a construction crane.
It was just a few years ago that rooftopping lingered on the fringes of the mainstream in North America, appealing to urban explorers who were already venturing into abandoned buildings, city sewers and subway systems.