
My Genesis piece and a piece borne of Maori mythology. A long gale-blasting late afternoon sitting atop the Tasman Lookout waiting for a sunset. Face chapped and burnt from the bitter cold, but I sit and wait mesmerized by the clouds forming and disappearing. I look up towards Aoraki, New Zealand's highest mountain, and I see a ginormous altocumulus lenticularis (standing wave cloud) caught on the peaks crafting into the shape of a bird, a famous bird in NZ and Maori culture, the tui. The tui in Maori mythology, is a messenger from the heavens, the link between Heaven and Earth. I had just a bare second and got 2 shots in, only one shows the bird formed properly, surely the rarest photo ever taken of a cloud! That evening I posted the image to Facebook and it immediately went viral, was printed in every newspaper in New Zealand. I had the media calling me, and in all a reach of over 1 million views on FB. *Sale includes original RAW file + timelapse file of tui forming.