B.C. man brings clouds to life with stop-motion movies

NORTH VANCOUVER, B.C. -

If you ask Yi Zhao why he’s been pointing his camera at the sky for so long, his answer will be simple.

“It’s just my hobby,” Yi laughs.

But taking one picture every minute for three hours is proving to be far more substantial than that.

“You kind of see everything come alive,” Yi smiles.

Before he shows us the timelapse video he’s making, Yi tells us some of the other things he’s brought to life.

“Because I’m doing computer animation,” he explains.

Before he retired, Yi worked on more than 30 movies and TV shows from ‘Hotel Transylvania’ to the Oscar-winning Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

“This is all connected to my career,” Yi points to his camera.

Except, instead of telling fictional stories on screen, Yi is now documenting a very real adventure unfolding around all of us, all the time.

“It‘s exciting,” Li laughs and points up to the movement in the sky. “To see everything alive.”

When he’s not capturing the drama of clouds forming over a city, Yi is contemplating how fungi is quietly growing in the forest.

“It’s not just a still picture,” Yi says before showing detailed closeup photos of mushrooms in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and colours.

Yi calls them “portraits from a hidden world” that many of us overlook.

The fungi photographs that he shares on his Instagram remind him of whimsical characters from old Disney movies, all with unique personalities.

“It’s great,” Yi smiles.

Because more than a hobby, Yi’s process of taking pictures has become a daily meditation that has taught him to slow down, connect with the world, and be unexpectedly inspired.

“When the cloud is moving it’s like music,” Yi smiles up at the sky, before gesturing his hands like a conductor. “Like a symphony with the orchestra.”

After he takes the hundreds of photos of clouds, he edits them all together with the music, capturing what he calls “the fleeting masterpiece of nature.”

“It feels great!” Yi laughs.

But you don’t need to be an extraordinary animator to bring an ordinary day to life.

Yi says if we pause, observe, and appreciate the beauty that surrounds us, we’ll find every moment can be filled with wonder both big and small.