Phoning it in
Daredevil’s smartphone pics gain him huge fanbase,
Only crane operators are supposed to reach the kind of city heights Jamal (Jayscale) Burger sees.
Dangling his sneakers off the edge of Toronto skyscrapers, the daredevil photographer is among a small group of “rooftoppers” who bring a new perspective to the city, redefining “views from the 6.”
He’s topped the 67-storey Ice East condominium tower on York St., snapped city hall from the roof of the Sheraton hotel, and looked down on Dundas Square and the Air Canada Centre. Though rooftopping isn’t always legal, Burger insists he’s always safe and enjoys “seeing where permission can get me.”
The 22-year-old Regent Park native is a rising Instagram star because of it, though he’s still got one foot in the everyday. During one June week, Burger wrapped up a cross-country trip with LG, re- presented a major beer brand at a Toronto music festival and had his bike stolen in the next beat.
But every bit a photographer, he has the right perspective: “It’s all good,” Burger says. “I’m probably not going to be home much this summer, so it doesn’t really matter.”
These days, Burger is a busy man. He’s working with LG to promote their new G4 phone around the country, and he has already logged photography gigs with Nike, Sport Chek, American Express and Best Buy, to name a few. A university dropout, Burger lives at home with his mom and younger sisters.
Speaking to the Star from the rooftop of a Harbour St. penthouse, however, the young man is already a consummate professional, name-dropping the phone he’s meant to promote while ensuring he doesn’t say the wrong thing.
“I wasn’t in it fully and I could tell,” he says of leaving the University of Toronto after three years studying kinesiology to pursue photography. “I know I’m smart, but I know if you’re not fully in something, you’re not going to get that far in it, or you’re just doing it for somebody else. I wanted to do something for myself.”
After finishing his exams last year, he told himself that that was it and he started photography.
“I didn’t initially plan out to be a photographer,” he says, but like so many his age, social media and his mobile phone gave him the confidence to explore. For Burger, the combination of Instagram and cellphone camera allowed for more than navel-gazing selfies. Instead, he turned the lens on the city he lived in, and got up really high to do it.
“I like being reminded that the city is so big and that there’s so many people, because it kind of makes you feel that you’re not as important — and you want to be important, so you
“I know I’m smart, but I know if you’re not fully in something, you’re not going to get that far in it . . . I wanted to do something for myself.” JAMAL (JAYSCALE) BURGER
work harder,” he says. “It’s kind of a motivational thing for me, and I think that shows in some of the photography I do.”
Though he’s seen his social media status increase tenfold in just a year — a kind of Gen Y dream — Burger is ready to take photos for fun again (not that his whirlwind tour with LG to Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver wasn’t fun, he insists — he got to take photos from a helicopter with no doors). But now, he plans to get back to his own photography full-time.
And he’s motivating hundreds of other budding photographers on social media as he does it. Today, his Instagram following sits at more than 64,200 followers.
“It’s weird because I didn’t start for that reason,” he says. “I’m not an attention seeker, but the fact that I can have a positive impact on somebody else motivates me and makes me want to continue doing it. It’s well worth it.”