A Tale of Two Photos

I’m in the highlands of Panama. The view before me is that of cloud forest. The whole of the place feels more like Olympic National Park than the tropics. Last night was 50 degrees Fahrenheit and we built a fire in the cabin. Moss covers all. And yet, there are palm trees here, even at nearly 8,000 feet.

Each tree seems to carry metric tons of bromeliads which adorn every square inch of every surface not covered in moss. It seems like everything is an endemic species up here. The orchids, the vines, the trees, the frogs, the snakes, the various assortment of colorful flowers both above and below. All of it is unique to here. This species is found only on this mountain. That species only on that peak. And tens of thousands of species can only be found in this sliver of mountain range.

There are the mammals such as the Bang’s mountain squirrel (endemic) that are so rare researchers have no idea if they are endangered or threatened since we know basically nothing about them. Amazingly, we have photographed this animal on two separate occasions already. Hummingbirds such as the Talamanca (endemic) drinks from the Columnea chiricana Wiehler (endemic)– a flower that spills from the canopy of the trees and doesn’t even have a “common name” in the English language.

This is biological overwhelm at its best. And we have only been at it for one week so far.

But that’s not what I want to discuss today. Instead, I want to share an experience with one of the most beautiful of all raptors on Earth that will hopefully help you begin to see and think and visually explore in a different way.

They are called the Ornate Hawk-Eagle, and they live up to their name. The species is classified as near threatened and has long been one I had simply hoped to see in the neotropics but certainly never expected to photograph on three separate occasions in a single morning. Yet, that is exactly what occurred.

All of us have likely experienced a moment with an animal that we simply couldn’t believe was happening. Maybe it was a moose or a bear. Maybe it was a resplendent quetzal (there were two of those the day before). Or as was the case this morning for me, it was a juvenile ornate hawk-eagle that landed at eye level in the cloud forest with a completely unobstructed view and a good background.

In situations like this, we all react the same way: camera up and fire away on the shutter button. We may make a half-hearted attempt at composing the photograph, some measure of designing things along the oh-so-elementary rule of the thirds or working the middle line. We try not to have sticks growing out of their heads, of course. But that’s basically it. Composition is rudimentary at best, and we are simply overwhelmed by the experience and site of what’s unfolding before us.

In these articles, I have often referred to this as being a reactionary photographer. We all do this at some point and to some level. However, as artists we must learn to force ourselves out of the reactionary approach.

I get it though. Sometimes, things are so extraordinary to us on a personal basis that all we desperately want is to just capture a documentary photograph of the moment. This was me when the ornate hawk-eagle swooped in. I found an open composition as quickly as possible, and just simply tried to capture photographs that were properly exposed. My heart was racing. My mind was screaming “don’t !@#$ this up!”

But as the bird continued to sit there, I forced myself to stop and reconsider the situation, the composition, the story I wanted to tell, the beauty of it all. This is the artistic Rubicon that is so easy to get stuck on the wrong side of in the field. When lost in the moment, we content ourselves with documentary portraits. We are so excited and caught up in the act of seeing and photographing an animal that we forget there are other possibilities. And so, we continue to stand or sit or lay there, stuck to the ground with Velcro taking one identical photograph after another.

Accompanying this article are three photographs, all created within 5 minutes of each other.

The above was the first photograph I created. Or at least it was from the first series of photographs I made of the ornate hawk-eagle. Excited to even see one of these birds, especially mid-canopy and at eye level like this, I simply tried to find a clean and simple composition. There is nothing inherently wrong with this photograph of course. It’s absolutely sellable to magazines or on the stock photography market. But it’s also just a bird on a stick. And after a minute of this, I remembered I don’t so much like the bird on a stick look.

The thing I love most about wildlife photography is the challenge of thinking and acting creatively in the moment. It’s not like writing a magazine article. It’s not like sitting down with my guitar. Often, we must “think on our feet,” as the saying goes. Situations are often changing rapidly, and you never know just how much time you will have with a subject.

For me, in the cloud forest with an ornate hawk-eagle, I was forced to begin thinking about the nature of the environment I was in. Nothing about the cloud forest is open. Even at 8,000 feet up, this is still the tropics with its riotous explosion of life. These birds are secretive. Good photographs are very few and far between. Harpy eagles are easier to find and photograph than the ornate hawk-eagle. One is lucky even to catch a glimpse of this species in the forest.

It was with this line of thinking that I began moving and re-composing. Even though I had a wide-open composition of this bird perched perfectly at eye level, I moved to position myself behind vegetation. Doing this obscured the bird in various ways. And it was this obscuration, the fuzzy out of focus nature of the foliage with pieces of the bird in focus, that began to create a composition that matched my thoughts and feelings about this bird and the situation at hand.

This is a technique I have used for years to help spice up a photograph of an animal in a tree. It creates a three-dimensional effect. And it can be used to achieve a variety of creative goals with our photography be it a black bear cub or a juvenile ornate hawk-eagle.

Compare the bird on the stick look to the other two photographs that accompany this article and I think you will see what I mean.

Maybe this isn’t for you. Maybe it’s not a “look” you would ever care to create in your photography. That’s OK. The point is, once we have made that “documentary portrait,” it’s time to branch out and go to work as a visual artist by seeking out a look, feel, or composition that does something more than simply say, “photo of ornate hawk-eagle.” This is art after all.

All of this is from just one opportunity with this bird. We had others. But with over 40,000 images filling up an entire 2 terabyte SSD travel drive from the last few days, and with another two weeks to go, I have not yet begun to even consider editing photos yet. Right now, I am just trying to keep up. A good problem to have, of course.

Down below, civil unrest is spreading across the country. Protests have broken out all over Panama. Highways are blocked by bonfires in the streets. Riot police have been mobilized and as university students, union workers, and environmental organizations have teamed up in protest of a renewed 20-year contract for a foreign company to continue work in the largest open pit mine in Central America here in Panama. While the chaos has created unique challenges for us, I am happy to see the love that so many Panamanians have for this extraordinarily beautiful place.

- Jared Lloyd

Want to join us in the cloud forests of Panama to photograph rare and endemic species? https://www.photowildworkshops.com/cloud-forest-panama-workshop