Wildlife Photographer of the Year: Shining a light on páramos

As soft sunlight breaks through the cloud shrouding the mountain peaks, a mystical glow is cast across Colombia’s Los Nevados National Park. Hundreds of palm-tree-like Espeletia stand tall, partially illuminated down the hillside, soaking in the last rays of the setting Sun.

There’s a serenity to this stunning scene, but is all really as it appears? Photographer Greg Basco talks us through capturing this otherworldly vista.

A hectic half hour

Compared to snapping a photo of a moving animal, getting a shot of the scenery might seem like the easier option. Just set up the camera on a tripod and hit the shutter button, right?

“Landscape photography, when you have a good scene going, can be really stressful,” Greg reveals. “Is this the best composition or should I be over there? You just have to kind of go for it.”

Running around at 4,200 metres above sea level, high in the Colombian Andes, this was the dilemma Greg was facing. It was a race against time to tease the best photo out of a rare window of opportunity.

“We just got really lucky because it can be totally bogged in a lot of the time in that area. We were lucky to have a mix of foggy clouds but with the Sun breaking through,” Greg recounts. “I didn’t use a tripod because things were changing so quickly – I basically just ran around and shot for half an hour where that amazing light was happening.”

Being in the right place at the right time is only part of getting the shot. You also have to trust the process.

“A lot of the time, a photo doesn’t come out like our eyes see it, and that’s basically down to the fact that our cameras just don’t have the same dynamic range – they can’t see the range of contrasts we do.”

In landscape photography, it’s common practice to take multiple photos and blend different exposures together. But to be within the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition rules, Greg knew he couldn’t do that, instead he had to get the photo in one shot. However, with the Sun so bright and low in the sky, getting the exposure under control would be challenging. Too much exposure and it would be a blinding white spot.

“Had I exposed like that, I would have had a lot more detail in the foreground on the plants. But by exposing more for the Sun, the rest of the photo was going to be quite dark.”

By knowing the capabilities of his camera and how to fine-tune a photo, Greg was able to bring out the incredible light and shadow in his final composition. As a photographer, these two skills are key, he notes. They stop him from getting frustrated when he looks at the screen on the camera and the scene captured doesn’t look quite as he perceived the scene in real life.

Exploring South America’s biodiversity hotspots

Greg’s career has kept him close to nature. He studied political science and biology at college and went on to work in reforestation in Costa Rica as part of the US Peace Corps. It was later, when working for the Missouri Botanical Garden and tasked with capturing photos for rainforest exhibits, that he found a passion for photography.

For the last 25 years, Greg’s been based in Costa Rica, capturing the world around him on camera for books and magazines. He even co-founded the country’s first photo tour company, Foto Verde Tours, with Costa Rican biologist, natural history guide and fellow photographer Paulo Valerio.

“We do tours throughout Latin America, and it takes me to really cool places, like Colombia,” he says. It was while scouting out locations for photo tours in Colombia’s Los Nevados National Park that Greg took his Highly Commended photo.

Páramo, the type of environment Greg was working in at the time, is a high-altitude, tundra ecosystem found at roughly 2,800–4,700 metres above sea level. It sits above the forests but below the permanent snowline.

There are similar environments in other tropical regions around the world, including in Africa and Southeast Asia, but these are often known by other names. “Páramo is the word you usually hear most commonly associated with Latin America,” Greg explains.

They’re filled with a unique assortment of more than 3,000 species of plant – the widest variety of plant species of any ecosystem on Earth. Around 80% of the flowering plant species in these wild places are found nowhere else in the world.

Fascinating frailejones

Standing among grass tussocks, the stars of Greg’s composition are the pillar-like Espeletia.

Topped with a rosette of green leaves accompanied by a heavy coat of dead ones hanging down around their stems, these Espeletia look a bit like palm trees, though the two aren’t actually related. “They’re related to sunflowers and daisies – they’re in the Asteraceae family – the largest plant family in the world,” says Greg.

Around 70 species of Espeletia – also known as frailejones or big friars – are found at high altitudes in Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador. They’re well adapted to their harsh life above the tree line. “They have these fuzzy leaves and that helps them capture the moisture that comes through the clouds because it doesn’t rain that much in these areas,” Greg explains.

The swirling fog that often coats the mountains isn’t just important to the plants that capture it. Pulled into the ground, this water transforms into streams and rivers, guaranteeing water security for millions of people too. Páramos have been described as the water towers of South America. They deliver water to major urban areas, including the capital cities Bogotá in Colombia and Quito in Ecuador. The value of these ecosystems is even more apparent when you consider that they make up less than one percent of the total land in Venezuela, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador.

While Greg’s photo is filled with Espeletia, he notes that some páramos have a bleaker appearance. “The ones we have in Costa Rica more fit that description because we don’t have those kinds of plants. They can be bleak and windy. It can be cold and often drizzly. It’s a tough environment out there,” he explains.

Tough as they are, páramos are home to more than just hardy plants. These special ecosystems are filled with a variety of animals too, from birds and insects that pollinate the plants to spectacled bears.

Protecting the páramos

While the warm light of Greg’s photo wraps you in a feeling of peacefulness, we shouldn’t ignore the shadow cast by how the modern world is impacting these misty places.

When most of us think about threats to South American environments, devastating fires or logging in the Amazon rainforest are often what comes to mind. But trouble is spreading to the Andes Mountains and into the páramos too.

“These plants are increasingly threatened throughout their range because of habitat disruption, such as potato farming moving in and taking over some of these ecosystems,” Greg explains.

At high elevation and with their challenging weather conditions, páramos may seem inhospitable, but people have been living in these places for thousands of years. Many today are rural farmers.

Agriculture, which is crucial for local economies, has intensified and expanded over the years.

Livestock overgrazing also poses problems as do uncontrolled wildfires that scorch the landscape. Then there’s also the ever-present threat of climate change.

As global temperatures rise, it’s expected to get warmer up in the páramos and they may see less precipitation, making them drier too. There’s some concern that while páramo soils are currently wet and helpfully store a lot of carbon, if they dry up, then they could become sources of carbon dioxide rather than sinks. Agriculture plays a part here too, as converting the land for agricultural use releases stored carbon.

In designing a solution, there’s a careful balance to be found between the many millions of people with a stake in the páramos. Between those who rely on them for agriculture, those who need them for water and those who want to preserve these biodiversity-rich environments.

In some places, conservationists are helping by carefully growing nurseries of Espeletiaopens in a new window to replace those lost to fires and the expansion of agriculture. Other projects go beyond reforestation and are looking for ways to generate alternative income for local communities that doesn’t come from deforestation. A fair and long-lasting solution for the páramos will likely work best if local people, knowledge and practices are part of those efforts.

But what role can a breathtakingly beautiful photo like Greg’s play in all this? For one thing, it offers us a window into an environment very different to those most of us are surrounded by here in the UK.

“I hope this just shows how stunningly beautiful these places can be,” says Greg. “I hope it could pique somebody’s interest in this kind of habitat and ecosystem and have them learn a bit more about what’s going on – and maybe get to visit one for themselves someday.”

Come and experience the wonder of life on Earth through this and other stunning photographs featured in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition.