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Painted Jezebel Delias hyparete
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Great Orange Tip Hebomoia glaucippe
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Swallowtail Papilio hoppo
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Shortly after I began birding and insect collecting in Taiwan, I borrowed my uncle's camera and 220 mm lens and started snapping away. It quickly became apparent that this lens was not long enough for photographing most birds, but it was quite ideal for insects, especially butterflies. Ever since, I brought the camera everywhere I went and spent a significant amount of my allowance on film and developing costs. The year I was to graduate from high school, I wanted to give my friends and teachers something special before going off to college, so I decided to publish a calendar using some of my butterfly photos. From over 1,000 photographs that I have taken of Taiwan butterflies, I selected twelve and published a desktop
calendar for 1999 (with lots of help from a fellow bird/butterfly-watcher who owned the publishing company). To help cover some of the expenses (about US$3,000!), I sold the calendar in bulk quantities to companies who wanted to advertise with them (I printed their company logo on the backboard for free.) The biggest surprise was that I ended up with a net profit of about US$3,000! I donated a third of this sum to the Wild Bird Society of Taipei, and the rest helped pay for my birding trip to Borneo two years earlier. I wish to thank my parents for their generous support of this project, and for their help in finding companies interested in buying these calendars. On the left are some pictures I scanned from the calendar. Unfortunately I've run out of copies to give one to everybody who wants one, so I will scan all the pictures from the original slides and put them on this page for your enjoyment. For additional examples of my photography, please see the Photo
Gallery. |
