An Alcatraz Island Prison prisoner tag (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The epithet ‘The Rock’ identifies, variously, Rocky Marciano, the promontory of Gibraltar, and Alcatraz Island, and it’s the last definition that’s relevant today: for infamous Alcatraz Prison is the lead story in our weekly three-pack of interesting or eye-popping Photography News.

The Rock

Also the title of a Nicolas Cage – Sean Connery thriller, maximum-security Alcatraz Prison has been boarded up for five decades.  Now a national park with a crumbling penitentiary at its centre, this symbol of American Justice recently made the news because its “final days” were “revealed in new photographs released for 50th anniversary of prison closing its doors for good.”  

Daily Mail’s detailed news story has photographs of the historic photographs as an exhibit on Alcatraz’s walls.  For the actual historic photographs, visit this San Francisco Chronicle page where you can see Alcatraz Island, a latter-day chain gang and mugshots of inmate #85 – Al Capone.

The Pyramid

These Russian risk-takers are evidently not scared of heights: two days back Daily Mail reported that they scaled the Great Pyramid of Giza to its very summit so as to take in ‘the view’ – and what a view it is.

It was – as one might guess – an illicit caper as indicated by a grainy nighttime shot of their getaway.

This story is not about High Art Photography, rather the subject-matter is squarely in the field of Adventure Photography.  However, the illegality of the ‘photo shoot’ seems to have put many people off.  Perhaps this story is grist for the mill for our ‘Controversy of the Week’ post over on BPro’s blog.  Either way, some of the vertiginous photos are breathtaking.

The Survivor

If there was a Survivor-style ‘reality show’ for cameras, Lindsay Scallan’s Canon snapshot camera would win it hands down.  Twenty-four hours ago DPReview posted a story on how Scallan lost her camera while scuba diving.  The kicker is that she lost it off Hawaii in 2007 and the camera was recovered off Taiwan in 2013!

The Good Samaritan who found the camera bobbing on the waves by the Taiwanese coastline took the time and trouble to check the memory card and then track down Scallan using, among other sources, Hawaii’s tourism bureau.

The camera spent six years in the briny yet kept an undamaged memory card!  This makes the episode an adverstising dream for Canon because the camera was “encased in a Canon WP-DC60 all-weather housing;” see it here.