View from the very top

In this picture by Wei Gensheng, he creates the effect that his crane hook is lifting the Oriental Pearl TV Tower.

As a crane operator, Wei Gensheng has taken advantage of being at the highest point of

construction sites to capture the beauty of Shanghai. He shares his passion with Wu Ni.

Having worked as a crane operator for nearly 40 years, Wei Gensheng rose to fame suddenly not as a construction worker but a photographer. The photos he took from his sky-high working position has won much praise from professionals and the public.

The 59-year-old Shanghai native is a tower crane operator at the construction site of Shanghai Tower, which will be China's tallest skyscraper when it is completed late this year, second only to the Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai.

Wei's job is to sit in the cabin 632 meters above ground, listening to instructions from the phone and operating the tower crane capable of lifting up to 100tons.

He enters the 1.2-meter-wide, 1.5-meter-long cabin at about 6 am and stays there all by himself for12 hours.

"A large part of my life has been spent in loneliness and boredom," says Wei, who will retire this September. "The camera is my best company."

He leaves his camera in the cabin. Over the past three years, he has taken more than 10,000 photos from his sky-high overlook. The best of them, about50photos, won him the silver award at the Shanghai International Photo-graphic Art Exhibition in November.