Skyscraper photography often reveals a lot about the photographer. The angles, composition, color balance, and light speak volumes about not only one's ability but also personal style. However...what if we turned skyscraper photography on its head? In other words, what happens when we start photographing these buildings from the top, looking down at the world? Well, then. Meet the Rooftopper.
Tom Ryaboi, acclaimed rooftopper, relaxing and photographing about fifty stories up
Rooftopping is more or less exactly what it sounds like. A form of urban exploration (and, by association, urban exploration photography), rooftopping involves scaling tall buildings - usually illegally - to explore a world that few see. Paying $5 to reach an observation deck is nothing to the rooftopper. It's a desire to climb to the very highest points of manmade Everests and Kilimanjaros, and it's often just as dangerous. Walking an edge like a balance beam, with nothing but air for 1,500 feet below you, is a thrill to the rooftopper. Climbing a girder or thick cable is just another hurdle, a way to triumph over our mammoth creations. There's hardly any discretion as to what exactly is being scaled; it could be an office building, an arena, a bridge, even a construction crane. So long as it's high up, and relatively desolate, you can bet a rooftopper will accept the challenge.
Dizzy yet? (Tom Ryaboi) As if that in itself isn't enough, some of them then take out the camera and tripod.
What results is a perspective that is completely unique, odd, beautiful and at times, a little vertigo-inducing. These photographers put their gear perilously over the edge with a tripod to capture images looking down on a society that is completely unaware they are being photographed. Sometimes, just for a little extra perspective, they simply hold their camera out, showing their dangling legs as they sit on the edge or their feet as they stand mere inches from a drop.
Scaling a radio tower high above Toronto (Tom Ryaboi)
I suppose it's the job of a trained psychologist to identify what gives these folks their ability to do this kind of thing, but in the end, perhaps it's just a touch of curiosity for rarely-visited places and a will to sacrifice quite a lot to get there. Tom Ryaboi, one of the more famous personalities of rooftopping, admits that ever since a young age he has been compelled to climb things. At one point, his father came home to find him atop a refrigerator with no way to get down; is it an innate compulsion to "get high"? Maybe. Whether or not the photo opportunities are worth the risk are a subject of debate that will span for a long time.
Tim Kauger is a blogger and photographer based in Short Hills, NJ. You can visit his website here.