Create a single page photo gallery with panels 2 and views

I am using Panels 2 to hopefully create a single page photo gallery. Basically I've created a content type for Photo where I have a thumbnail, the main photo, a description, and a category (using taxonomy) that the photo can be in. Then I've created a view that lists the photo thumbnails with a link to the node, but also with an exposed filter of the taxonomy for the photos. What I want to do now is have a panel page that has the view down the left side, and has the rest of the page so that when you click on one of the thumbnails, you get the same page, but with the details of the photo you clicked on in the main section of the page. The main trouble seems to be the exposed filter isn't defaulting to the user chosen value on reload of the page.

I created something similar with news stories, but I didn't have the whole exposed filter in the view, so it was really quite easy. Although, I did for some reason have to create two panels, one for news/% that takes the id of the news story and loads that into the middle of the page, and one for news/ where it is the default page and there is no selection yet. Otherwise the news/ page shows up as page not found. Anyway, that is a separate problem.

First, is what I'm trying to do even possible? Second, any hints on how I can fix my problem?

Thanks ahead of time for your help,
Stephanie