Little Buggers, Big Pelicans and the Slowskys

Reading the directions is torture.  It’s the last resort well after head banging and excessive bad language.  This is a problem when learning a complicated craft such as photography where the path forward is often blocked with indecipherable manuals.  

Imagine my delight upon discovering a workshop on flash photography on a cool island with an excellent teacher.  Is it possible to learn flash basics and avoid a descent into manual and youtube hell?  Yes.

After an extensive Covid delay, Jared Lloyd’s workshop in Bocas del Toro, Panama was on.  Let the buying begin.  We needed gear – flash, flash bracket, flash cord, flash extender, flash box and a way to connect the bracket to the camera or lens.   But the real panic came over how to safely check all the gear into the belly of the beast, have a backpack for short hikes while respecting a carry-on weight restriction of 8lb.  Jared provided the simple solution, put the backpack loaded with gear into a pelican case.  Genius.  Pelican’s stock got a nice bump.  

We arrived in Panama City and enjoyed a classroom day before the trek to Bocas del Toro. After a prop plane ride to Isla Colon, the big pelican cases were loaded first into vehicles, driven to a pier, then into boats.  At long last, we made it to our island and Tranquilo Bay Eco Adventure Lodge, home for the next 5 nights.  My kind of place.  

We immediately got down to business learning flash and the necessary camera settings to achieve various results.  It was obvious incorporating flash into wildlife photography would be transformational. There were six students, two excellent teachers, Jared Lloyd and Annalise Kaylor plus our wonderful naturalist Stacey Hollis.  

We experimented with frog and snake setups that yielded beautiful photos for all.  Bocas del Toro has a lot to offer but many photographers come for the frogs.  We discovered that frogs are suffering from their own pandemic caused by the chytrid fungus.  Frog populations in several countries have been decimated.  Frogs have suffered in Bocas del Toro but to a lesser degree that other areas leading some to believe proximity to the sea and salt water provide protection against this scourge. 

While I wish we had these frogs in our backyard, I am glad we don’t have army ants.  There was a literal brigade crossing the path to our cabins.  To avoid the very unpleasant army ant bite, we ran up and down the path to minimize the opportunity for a handy meal.  Army ants love feet and their yummy smells.  Then I had a great idea.  How about getting a photograph for this article?  With extreme caution, I head up the path and see hundreds of them marching in columns, presumably a safe distance ahead.  Bad assumption.  The little buggers found me before I could find the shutter release and my feet and legs were covered instantly.  No time for picture taking while madly swatting ants at a dead run to the hose bib.  My feet burned for an hour.  

While I did not record the army ants for posterity, here is a shot of leaf cutter ants, the farmers of the ant world who form large, complex societies.  They are truly mesmerizing and if interested in the details, here is a quick article to satisfy your curiosity.  

Of the wildlife we encountered, the adorable three toed sloth was my favorite, the real slowskys. In addition to making anyone who sees them happy, sloths offer disconnected humans an important lesson on the symbiotic relationship between earth’s creatures.  Note the algae on Mrs. Sloth.  “The fur of a sloth doubles as a personal, edible garden ecosystem that house a collection of diverse microorganisms, many of which are found nowhere else.  A prominent member of this mobile ecosystem is the pyralid moth (Cryptoses species) whose entire life-cycle is dependent on the sloth.”  

The interesting article quoted above theorizes that the three toed sloth comes to the ground for a weekly constitutional in which the moths lay their eggs and grab some nutrient rich waste to feed the algae.  The algae in turn feeds and camouflages the sloth.  After contemplating this article, I wonder if we gave Mrs. Sloth a case of stage fright when we were lying next to her in the mud, clicking away.  Instead of digging a hole to do her business, she did a slow flow across the ground and climbed another tree.  Did Mrs. Sloth wait another week?  Were the moths able to lay their eggs?  Did the algae get the needed nutrients to flourish?  Something to think about in the future.  

While shooting a hummingbird nest, another sloth came into view and all thoughts of the hummingbird vanished.  At one point the sloth was directly above us.  Imagine a camera, dangling flash equipment and heavy zoom lens smashed against my face to get this shot.  It is important to note this would have been an ideal opportunity to use fill flash with flash extender to reduce ISO.  Sadly operator error got in the way of that.  Next time.    

And let’s not forget the monkeys.

We also made a couple of trips to Bird Island, an hour boat ride from Tranquilo Bay.  As the name suggests Bird Island is a rookery populated by thousands of birds including the Red-Billed Tropic, Brown Booby and Magnificent Frigatebird.  This prehistoric place offered an excellent opportunity to practice tracking, manage exposure settings, see beautiful birds all while in two foot swells.  The morning after our first trip to Bird Island, Jared must have seen the concentration on my face and asked if I was alright.  I replied I was great and was mentally reviewing the questions I would torture him and Annalise with over breakfast.  Bird Island revealed some notable gaps in my learning.  Over yet another delicious breakfast, they provided the education I needed on exposure.  

On our second trip to Bird Island, Jared directed our attention to the birds flying over the crashing waves.  The sun was behind us, the waves bright white, the brown boobies dark, the fast red-billed tropics white, the sky and sea blue, the seas rough, the boat small.  Difficult.  Jared yelled out an exposure compensation suggestion.  Didn’t work for the Sony.  This incredibly beautiful scene was playing out in front of us, possibly never to be seen again, and I was screwing it up.  JARED! HELP! Settle down, think about what you have learned, you know what to do.  Manual ISO.  

With photography there is always more to learn. On our second day at Bird Island, photos would have been far better utilizing custom white balance to avoid the clipped blue bomb. Jared mentioned this but I did not delve in. Correcting white balance and clipped blues in post is not always easy and life is far simpler to get it right in camera. Went with a bleached look for the brown booby scene above and moody blue for the red-billed tropic below. A deep dive into white balance and its impact on the histogram is in my future.

Normally a bird against a clear sky isn’t that exciting. However, I do like this front on shot of the brown booby.

On our last morning, we learned another interesting flash technique that produces a crisp white background.  We practiced with the parakeet heliconia.  For details on how to achieve this look, check out Jared’s video.  

We all loved this workshop.  The people were great both in our group and at Tranquilo Bay.  We learned heaps, had wonderful photo opportunities, had excellent food and enjoyable conversation.  This was my first organized photo workshop and while I prefer solo photography excursions, I will sign up for another.  Thank you Jared, Annalise and Stacy for making us all better photographers and teaching us the mysteries of nature.  You are all very good at what you do.    

DETAILS

• While there was much to learn in this workshop, one of the primary takeaways was to have the histogram visible in the viewfinder at all times and actually look at it. In some circumstances such as a small bright white object in a dark background, the tiny histogram on my camera can be hard to read. Therefore I keep “zebras” activated which indicate areas of over or underexposure. Exposure compensation can then be adjusted accordingly. For those using Sony, I highly recommend Mark Galer tutorials on this and a range of subjects.

• The learning continued as I edited photos. It is very exciting to shoot beautiful or interesting scenes. One can be so captivated that all the technical details go out the window. For example on our second trip to Bird Island, I neglected to consistently monitor the histogram and did not adjust exposure as we were loosing the light. Consequently the later photos are underexposed which made the blue bombs even harder to fix.

• I came across Jared Lloyd via his well written photography articles that somehow hide the fact that I am “reading the directions”.  It was clear that in addition to being an accomplished wildlife photographer, Jared could teach.  His Journal of Wildlife Photography is first-rate.  Feel free to visit https://jaredlloydphoto.com for details on this and upcoming workshops.  

• As one of my mentors beat into my head, taking the photo is only 50% if it.  Processing represents the rest and can propel an ordinary photo into something truly beautiful.  While I have a long way to go, I benefited greatly from the Ultimate Wildlife Photography Course , also available at the site above or https://journalofwildlifephotography.com.  

• For a nature escape, I highly recommend Tranquilo Bay Eco Adventure Lodge.  For the birders of the world, you are guaranteed to add many lifers.  The wildlife is wonderful and hanging with sloths is fun.  https://www.tranquilobay.com

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