"Did You Get That?"

REMEMBRANCE: As a Video Chronicler for Lindblad Expeditions, I videotaped multiple passages through the Panama Canal, now in the news. And I saw the Galapagos, Belize, Ecuador, Panama & Costa Rica.

I’ve traveled by small ship multiple times through the Panama Canal. And I videotaped those passages as a Video Chronicler for Lindblad Expeditions, both by day and by night. We traveled on the company’s small ship, the Sea Lion.

On that ship and its sister vessel, the Sea Bird, I saw Panama, Costa Rica, Belize, Ecuador, the Galapagos, the Columbia & Snake rivers, Baja California and the Inside Passage of Alaska.

These were not ‘cruise’ ships. There was no entertainment on board. These were expedition ships. And there were about 100 guests on each expedition. The staff included the ship’s crew, an expedition leader, nature guides, hospitality workers, boatmen and me. We all had quarters on the ship. We were at sea for about four weeks, going back and forth from departure ports to destination ports, picking up a new roster of guests every Sunday.

I worked six of those days from 6am until midnight - shooting, digitizing, compositing, editing, writing, narrating and duplicating a complete video of the voyage for the guests to buy on the last day of their journey. I got paid $100 a day. On the seventh day, I had to prepare for the next journey. It was exhausting.

One time a guest said that this must be my dream job, not realizing I was working 18 hours a day. It certainly was his dream vacation. For me, it was grueling. I was mostly awakened each morning with loud knocks on my tiny cabin door, accompanied by shouts of something like, “whales!” or “dolphins!” or “manta rays!” So, rub the sleep from your eyes, grab the camera, rush up to the deck and start working. Most of the time I slept in my clothing.

I did get fat though, since I ate with both the guests and the crew. That was six meals a day, if I wanted.

The rest of the time I was trying to catch on videotape anything and everything the guests experienced on their multiple treks to trails and forests and glaciers and tundras and dry magma and habitats and icebergs and waterways and waterfalls .

More than once, as whales were breaching all around the bow of the ship a guest would yell, “Did you get that?” More often than not, I got the three-second shot. When I didn’t, they’d yell, “Bob got it.” Well now, there were a hundred guests lining all the railings. Of course, someone got it.

I tried to train the guests on the first day to yell out the clock position of their sightings from the bow, so I could quickly pivot to that location. But, instead, they always yelled, “Over there!” Of course that meant that I first had to locate the voice, then locate where they were pointing. Yeah, by then it was likely too late. But, like I said, hot-footing it from stern to bow, I usually got the shot anyway.

These were in the pre-digital camera and smart phone days. I had a crappy Sony prosumer video camera with tape cartridges. I had to screen, select and digitize the video in real time on the computer in my cabin. That took hours each night.

Lots of the video chroniclers just put together videos that were essentially, “we saw this, then we saw this, then we saw this… .” I tried to make each of the mini expeditions off-board into a complete story, each with a cohesive narrative and each with a musical accompaniment (from a music library) that had emotional peaks and valleys. One time a guest, after watching my completed video, said, “Wow, you must have a great camera.” I replied, “Would you say to Hemingway, ‘Wow, you must have a great pen?’” I think the exhaustion must have gotten to me.

Anyway, with today’s talk about the United States ‘acquiring’ the Panama Canal, I thought I’d share two canal passage videos - one in the daytime and one at night. We could not use footage we had shot previously in any of our videos. Every shot had to be from that current voyage.

So, each time I went through the canal, which was, I think, maybe eight times, I had to get every shot anew. That meant running to all the positions on the ship - stern, bow, starboard & port. I had to get the boatmen throwing the ropes and the rowers catching the ropes. I had to get the locks opening and closing. I had to get the locomotives going up and down. To be sure, I burnt off a lot of the calories from those six meals. And I got the shots.

So, without further ado, here are two videos which I called “The Ballet of the Locks.”

Near the end of my journeys with Lindblad, the company merged with National Geographic. That’s when we also sailed with a NatGeo photographer (who carried thousands of dollars of professional quality gear and lenses.) For the most part, they were assholes. Our experienced Lindblad nature guides always told us not to antagonize the animals or feed them or interact with them in any way. They expected us all to respect the wildlife and their habitats. The NatGeo photogs, however, ignoring those pleas, would try to frighten their photographic prey into making ferocious defensive postures, or they would feed the animals to bring them out into the open. All for ‘The Shot.’ This greatly distressed the Lindblad nature guides. Like I said, the new photogs were mostly assholes.

Anyway, you can watch more of my nature videos from my time with Lindblad on Vimeo. (You’ll have to scroll through some very old music videos.). The quality of the images is pretty piss-poor. But, I did my best with what I had to get the shots and tell the stories.

Maybe I’ll get back to Panama, along with Greenland and Canada, when those ‘territories’ become ‘acquisitions’ of the United States. And to heck with the statehood desires of citizens in Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. They ain’t got no trade routes or natural resources to control and exploit.