 |
| Photo: Weibo |
Editor’s Note: We have decided not to post the video of the tragedy, or even link to it. Please, if you value your life, do not engage in ‘rooftopping’ or other risky activities for the sake of a ‘cool’ photo. There are legal and safe ways to capture great photos from tall places.
Performing dangerous stunts to capture exciting photos has long been hotly debated, but that hasn’t stopped some people from continuing to do incredibly dangerous things for the sake of a few Instagram likes. “Rooftopping,” the act of climbing a very high structure to take images showing the distance to the ground, is one of the most popular of these activities, and it recently claimed the life of 26-year-old Chinese rooftopper Wu Yongning.
Yongning regularly engaged in risky photo shoots. Hanging off of tall buildings earned him more than 60,000 followers on Weibo and a portfolio of unique, if vertigo-inducing and deeply unsettling, images. In the end, it also claimed his life.
 |
| Photo: Weibo |
According to Channel NewsAsia, Yongning fell from the 62-story Huayuan Hua Centre while filming an attempted stunt to win 100,000 CNY (about $ 15k USD / €13k EUR) from an unnamed sponsor. Yongning reportedly planned to use the money to fund his wedding and help pay his mother’s medical bills.
A camera that had been set up to record the stunt captured Yongning’s final moments, showing him performing a couple of pull-ups while hanging off the edge of the skyscraper. Tragically, Yongning didn’t have the strength to pull himself back onto the rooftop afterward, and without anyone there to help him back up, he eventually lost his grip and fell.
The incidence happened on November 8th.
Recent public awareness of the tragedy has prompted Chinese state media to warn against performing unsafe social media stunts for money and/or attention.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
You must be logged in to post a comment.