[Photo provided to Shanghai Star]

The ever-changing sky is a draw for many photographers. Wu Ni chats to a professional about the best ways to capture the roof of the world.

As an enthusiast of landscape photography, Zhang Haitao, senior member of the China Photographer Association, is passionate about capturing the changing sky. He loves to photograph clouds when they are dark and angry and when they are happy and fluffy. He photographs sunrises and sunsets and spectacular evening skies glowing with the remains of the day.

The most common photo taken of the sky depicts white clouds against blue sky. To make the clouds look whiter and the sky clear, you can meter the clouds and increase exposure by one level. An aperture of F11 can present the photo’s depth of field.

When composing the picture, you can use an ultra-wide angle lens to highlight magnificent clouds, or a telephoto lens to focus on details in the sky, like flying pigeons, making the clouds background.

A polarizing filter can be applied to make the sky darker and bluer, as the filter cuts out a lot of the atmospheric glare that will send unwanted light into your camera.

The best time frame to capture a sunrise or sunset is short, about 20 minutes in all. But do not leave immediately after sunset, because ten minutes later the afterglow makes amazing fiery clouds. The flaming clouds last for no longer than five minutes.

Then, it is the blue hour, when the sky is clear blue before it is completely dark. In summer, you can capture a night view with beautiful blue sky and luminous buildings.