Well… It is in the eye of beholder, or should we say “googler”. Like in this example below. A man presumably stands on a rock face 900meters in the air to get his perfect shot. If you observe the photos below it certainly looks that way! To be honest when I saw this email with the photographs attached I believed it….
(Here is the email)
Basket Case?
This is the case of 1 photographer taking photographs of a 2nd photographer.
The following photos were taken by Hans van de Vorst from the Netherlands at the Grand Canyon, Arizona ..
The descriptions are his own.
The identity of the 2nd photographer is unknown.
I was simply stunned seeing this guy standing on this solitary rock at The Grand Canyon ..
The canyon’s depth is 900 meters (3000ft) here.
The rock on the right is next to the canyon and is safe.
Watching this guy – wearing flip-flop sandals – with camera and tripod, I asked myself 3 questions:
1. How did he get onto that rock ?
2. Why not take that sunset picture from the rock to the right, which is perfectly safe?
3. How will he get back?
After the sun set behind the canyon’s horizon, he packed his things (having only on free hand) and prepared himself for the jump.
This took about 2 minutes, and at that point, he had the full attention of the crowd of tourists.
He’s now at the point of no return – he jumped in his flip-flops.
Now you can see that the safe rock is higher so he had to land lower – which was quite steep – and tried to use his one free hand to grab the rock.
Look carefully at the photographer.
He has a camera, a tripod and a plastic bag, either on his shoulder or in his left hand.
Only his right hand is available to grab the rock and the weight of his stuff is a problem.
He landed low – his right hand and right foot are slipping.
At this very moment, I took this shot.
He then pushed his body against the rock, waited for a few seconds, threw his stuff up on the flat rock , climbed up and walked away, presumably to a bathroom to change his shorts.
I know I had to change mine – and I was only watching !
(End of email)
But then common sense starts to kick in, how crazy is this guy? Will he really risk his life to capture that image, and why are the photos perfectly cropped so that you cannot see all the detail, like the 900m drop below?
Surely that would have made a more compelling photo in my opinion. But these post are common these days, claiming extraordinary things with very little truth to it.
Getting behind the truth.
So now you have this “amazing email”, do you send it to your friends? Sure why not, only so that one of your friends can email you back with the truth and make you feel like an complete idiot. So before sending out the mail I googled it, to check if this was indeed a real event that happened, and see what I found.
Because of the photographers unique perspective of these shots, it looks like there can be a 900m drop below, but from another perspective you can clearly see that it is not the case. So mystery solved!
Jip the guy was still crazy to make that jump, but at least he did not risk his life like stated in the mail.
Granted it was still a very risky move and it did happen, just not as described in the mail.
Advice on how to protect your credibility.
If you get one of these unbelievable mails, check the facts before sending it to your friends.
Do your research and use your unique common sense!
Here are a couple of links were you can find busted myths of the net.
Also view:
Happy Fact Finding!
Thankx for sharing as I also received that email and was wandering what did that guy smoke.