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"When photographing insects, I choose backgrounds that evoke scenes from my childhood."
After graduating from university, I continued to help out at the laboratory for a while. One day, on a trip to the mountains, I was able to photograph the courtship behavior of Pieris butterflies, and this led to a pleasant surprise. The photos I took were used in a journal featuring a series of articles by Professor Hidaka, and for the first time I received a fee for my work. Although it only came to 3,600 yen, it was still a substantial amount for me in those days. This was during the time of student unrest, and by then I'd already abandoned the idea of being a scholar. Being paid a fee was the final push I needed to become an insect photographer.
Professor Hidaka was a man of boundless imagination who helped me in many ways, and was a strong influence on me. When I started my career, he was always there for me with advice. I can never thank him enough for everything he did.
Once in a while, one gets an idea that can lead to a great discovery. In 1984, I came up with a method using a wide-angle lens and a strobe light to capture images of flying butterflies as if they were motionless. Up until then I'd been using a macro lens to photograph butterflies. Then one day I mounted a 21mm F2 lens to my camera and took some shots using a strobe light. I was using an Olympus OM-2 at the time. The photos were highly praised by one biologist, and that gave me a tremendous amount of confidence.
During that period, although I already considered myself to be a photographer specializing in insects, I was still in my 20s and couldn't get much work. In fact, I taught at a cram school while working as a part-time photographer. And then some of the photographs of insect camouflage and mimicry I'd continued to take since university and during my travels in tropical Asia were published as a series in a magazine. It seemed to me that my lifework had finally been recognized. I was overjoyed.
My technique is to photograph not only insects themselves, but also the surrounding ecosystem, in other words the environment they live in. Before me, no one took shots of insects in this way. What I want to do is somehow fix in photos the scenes I yearn for from my childhood. I'd like people who see my shots of butterflies on the wing, for example, to feel the desire to go to the same location and take photos of their own. I want to capture the insects together with background scenes that evoke such emotion.
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