I joined Jared Lloyd, founder of PhotoWild Workshops, and five other photographers in Panama the last week of November and first week of December 2024. We participated in Jared’s Wildlife of Panama workshop. This post is about the second in-country destination, the Panama Canal at the city of Gamboa and the nearby Gatun Lake and Chagres River complex. This complex supports the water flow for the canal’s locks.
The workshop education content and in-the-wild hands-on practice are also covered.
I chose this workshop for two reasons:
Reason 1. It would be a return trip to Panama. More on this later. Panama is smack in one of the most biodiverse regions in the world. Tropical forests and reefs are only 2 percent and less than 1 percent, respectively, of the Earth’s surface. Despite their small size, they contain most of the planet’s biodiversity. Panamanian rainforests and reefs being excellent examples. Not much bigger than South Carolina, Panama is home to more species of birds (972) and plants (10,444) than Canada and the United States combined. Add to this count 255 species of mammals (6 monkeys) and 222 species of amphibians (229 frogs).
This exceptional biodiversity and complex biological interactions, including unique co-evolutions, are the outcome of a major global geological event – the emergence of the Isthmus of Panama three million years ago. A bridge rose that connected North and South America. This triggered the Great American Biotic Interchange – the migration of plant and animal species between the Americas – which continues today. Dividing what was once one large tropical ocean into two new marine environments, Caribbean and Eastern Tropical Pacific, also drastically changed global currents and thus climates. Panama being the distinct dividing line. Each coast and the highlands being directly effected and spawning multiple micro-habitats that became and continue to be highly active evolution labs with numbers of endemic species.
One showcase for this biodiversity is the Chagres River and Gatun Lake complex that stores the water necessary for the canal’s locks to function. The Chagres River is is the largest river in the Panama Canal’s drainage basin. Its headwaters are in the Cordillera de San Blas, a range mountain range located in northwestern Panama. Flowing south-southwest, it broadens to form Madden Lake (22 square miles) at Madden Dam, built in 1935 for navigation, flood control, and hydroelectric power. Leaving Madden Lake, it flows southwest to Gamboa. where it joins the Panama Canal. Its channel then then turns northward through Gatún Lake.
Except for the canal portion, the Chagres is isolated and navigable only by small boats making it a perfect pathway into the rainforest. Including flowing through the dense and lush Chagres National Forest, a sanctuary for many species that make up Panama’s acclaimed biodiversity.
Gatun Lake is on the other end of isolation. It is the ‘multilane highway’ for boats and ships of all sizes moving through the canal. At first that would seem counter to a wildlife photographer’s premier destination. But, it is surrounded by undeveloped rainforest shoreline with many small tributaries accessible to panga boats (small skiffs). It’s many islands, uninhabited by humans, are also a distinguishing feature. Each island can have it’s own wildlife populations that represent a unique subset of Panama’s biodiversity. Quite literally, there is a photographic ‘surprise’ opportunity around every point and up every small creek.
Reason 2. Under Jared’s guidance the workshop content and field experiences are intensely focused on ethically ‘getting the shots”. For me, this meant being given artistic, technical and fieldcraft advice that improves the quality of my portfolio. I received advice reinforced with hands-on, in-the-field opportunities. I implemented, tested, and tweaked capturing images in a variety of target rich ecosystems. Making it possible to embed the concepts, and the thinking supporting them, in my brain and muscle memory and camera settings. During the trip and when I got back home.
Before we went to the supremely beautiful Bocas del Toro (Mouth of the Bull) archipelago and to Gamboa, we spent the first day in Panama City. We stayed in our hotel for classroom discussions. The purpose was to level set the group on the reasoning for the image capture approaches Jared suggests be use in the field. We covered the range of photography genres and lighting conditions we would face – active and static birds and mammals in the canopy, birds in flight, forest floor low light, macro, flash.
Would I have preferred to head straight to the rainforest, rivers, islands, mangroves? Yes I would. But as mentioned, an important criterion for choosing this workshop was to prepare my mind and eye. Then, it was to set my camera for intentionally avoiding my all too common common shots. For example, not multiple frames of a bright bird frozen in flight with flat wings against a bright blue, cloudless sky. Instead, aim for a well exposed bird with a contrasting background.
I’m not going to share details of the lessons. That’s Jared’s intellectual capital. I will summarize by saying Jared is an artist who chooses photography as his medium. He is also an exacting student of ethology. He observes, researches in depth animal behavior. In practice this means looking for subjects doing something interesting, in light and against backgrounds that are captivating. When combined lend themselves to classic artistic principles for a pleasing, compelling, engaging visual. Jared then explains his thinking for camera settings and positioning, and supplemental lighting if needed, that renders the scene as ‘seen’. This is in one word, intentionality. It is not a set of universal photography ‘rules’.
A good way to get up to speed on how to be this intentional is to subscribe to PhotoWild Magazine. Read the magazine along with the supporting articles and newsletter. Listen to the podcasts. I do not have a stake in PhotoWild. I just think it is a value in image quality ‘upgrade’.
This approach may seem too variable. It might appear to require a lot of time fiddling with menus, making you miss in-the-moment shots. In practice it is not. It’s just the opposite. Core settings can be established for each basic wildlife scenario. Scenarios that are likely to be encountered in an outing. Then you only need to change basic settings like exposure and ISO on the fly. Plus, many cameras allow use cases to be stored in custom modes. This is especially true for ones with feature sets focused on wildlife and action. This is particularly true of the OM System OM-1. In fact, I will update my post on OM1 settings to reflect my workshop experience.
