Photographer at the Grand Canyon

Photographer at the Grand Canyon:
This is a case of 1 photographer photographing 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 photographer in the photos 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 flipflop 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 one free hand) and prepared himself for the jump. This all took about 2 minutes.
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 flipflops.

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 also a plastic bag, all 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 lands low. Both his right hand and right foot are slipping. At that very moment, I take this shot. He then pushes his body against
the rock, waits for a few seconds, throws his stuff up on the flat rock, climbs up and walks away, presumably to a bathroom to change his shorts.
I know I had to change mine and I was just watching!

Hans van de Vorst

For those interested in accurate stories, here is the "rest of the story"...

It really wasn't a 3000' fall to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. You just don't see the bottom of the first four images.

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