City of clouds - PHOTO

A crane operator has used his sky-high position working on what will be the second highest building in the world to take award-winning photographs of the amazing Shanghai skyline.Wei Gensheng is working on a construction crane for the Shanghai Tower – the world’s second largest freestanding building and highest in China – which will be an incredible 121 storeys (2, 073ft or twice the height of the Eiffel Tower) when it is completed in 2014.Some 13 of the 20 tallest buildings under construction around the world are underway in China and the metropolitan hub of Shanghai is home to more than 20,000 buildings over 11 storeys.The city of 23 million inhabitants has been increasingly building upwards in a bid to make room for the exponentially growing population which has increased by 50 per cent over the last decade. Some nine million are migrant workers.The amazing series of photographs of the Shanghai skyline have won Mr Gensheng second prize in the Shanghai City Photography Competition yesterday.The tallest building in the world is the Burj Khalifa, a 2,722ft-high skyscraper, in Dubai which towers over the building that was for so long the world's tallest, New York's Empire State, which was 1,250 feet originally, but increased by a new antenna in 1950 to 1,467 feet.The new Shanghai Tower will feature nine sky lobbies and office, retail and hotel space across a total floor space of more than four million square feet.(dailymail.co.uk)ANN.Az