Regrets of close encounters
Unlike photographing portraits or landscapes, butterflies never follow instructions. While it is easy to capture a butterfly in one's net, it takes a lot of effort to make it sit still for a photo. Tsai's first challenge was that of inadequate equipment. He started out with a Nikon F2 AS, which was fully manual in its operation. This meant that he had to set up the flash and set the aperture and shutter speed. Furthermore, the flash was not adjustable, but could only fire at full brightness. When Tsai discovered the presence of butterflies, he would pay attention to their every movement and consider how to draw near without frightening them.
"Sometimes I would discover a rare specimen, but with my attention on the butterfly I would not be able to adjust my camera. If on the other hand I dropped my guard and adjusted my camera settings, the butterfly might just disappear without a trace in the blink of an eye. Sometimes when I had just missed a butterfly or lost a good opportunity, it might be many years, or never, before I might have that chance again," says Tsai.
The most dramatic example of such close encounters was when he engaged in a game of hide-and-seek with the prized broad-tailed swallowtail butterfly (Agehana maraho).
The broad-tailed swallowtail is unique among butterflies, and as a caterpillar eats only the leaves of the Taiwanese sassafras. However, the tree's natural habitat is very scarce and it may be found in scattered locales in the forests of the Central Mountain Range, at about 900-1200 meters altitude. Thus, the broad-tailed swallowtail is a rarely seen creature. The Forestry Bureau later planted a stand of sassafras trees on Mt. Taiping in Ilan in order to give the butterflies a safe, secluded breeding ground.
Tsai spent ten years trying to capture these "dream lovers" on film. There were many close calls. Once, a friend had taken him to Chihtuan, the highest point of the Northern Cross-Island Highway. Workers were in the process of laying asphalt when he suddenly saw a single broad-tailed swallowtail, hovering over the surface of the road, perhaps attracted by the scent of the asphalt. His friend immediately hit the brakes and Tsai rushed out of the vehicle with his camera. He took off the lens cap and stepped gingerly forward. With only a few meters' distance to cover, however, the butterfly flew straight up and away.
In March 1983, in early spring, Tsai traveled to Chiayang on Mt. Li to await the butterflies, but found that he had arrived too early, for the sassafras trees had not yet budded. However, three months later, when the trees were green, the broad-tailed swallowtails were nowhere to be seen. In early June of that year, Tsai went to Mt. Taiping in Ilan to try his luck there but due to some heavy rain soon returned to Mt. Li. Only when he examined the sassafras trees' leaves did he discover that during the two days that he had been away, broad-tailed swallowtails had just laid their eggs! Although he had missed the adults, there was still a chance that he could see the caterpillars grow up and undergo their metamorphosis. All he could do was wait.
The eggs hatched in about a week, but by September all traces of the creatures had disappeared. It turned out that the caterpillars would select dried wood or grass upon which to pupate. They would spend the winter as chrysalises and turn into butterflies the following April to June. Tsai would have to wait until the next year for that to happen. In 1995, Tsai waited an agonizing 14 days and nights, finally obtaining the photographs he desired of these "dream lovers."
Tsai has mixed feelings when talking about the twists and turns of those events: "The process of searching out the broad-tailed swallowtail enabled me to photograph over 300 other butterfly species. It was as if I was being secretly led into an appreciation of the butterflies' colorful world."
In his first few years of photographing butterflies, Tsai captured and bred butterflies to support himself financially. A Japanese student who once saw him photograph a butterfly and then capture it with a net, exclaimed in astonishment, "Isn't it a bit of a contradiction to photograph a butterfly and then capture it?" Tsai could only respond with an awkward silence.
Some time afterwards, Tsai captured a golden birdwing butterfly (Troides aeacus) in the mountains near Hualien. He put the butterfly into a paper bag. On returning home, however, he discovered that this female had been near the time of delivery, and had laid her eggs in the paper bag. Tsai felt ashamed to have sacrificed the lives of these butterflies to satisfy his own personal needs.
"I was forced to choose between pho-tographing butterflies and capturing them. I thought that if I were able to photograph all of the butterflies in Taiwan, and do that well, I might be able to make my living that way." Thus, Tsai gave up capturing butterflies, spending summers photographing them and winters in the city, where he worked as a street vendor with his brother-in-law in order to make a living.
Most butterfly caterpillars have no means of defending themselves, but rely on disguising or concealing themselves from enemies. Here, what appears to be a small green snake about to strike is actually the caterpillar of the great orange tip butterfly (Hebomoia glaucippe formosana).