Richard Nigro

I am new to Affinity and the use of photo shop applications. This may be naive, however while this may be straight forward, I can't seem to resolve it. I am working on a Mac Powerbook. I am working on a project where I want to layer three photos - all taken from the same pov, but at different times* - in Affinity Photo 2. I can drag one photo into the app, make one layer. However when I try to import a second photo, it appears only as a thumbnail size. How do I incorporate all three photos as layers. The top two layer will be transparent * see photos below

I have somehow removed all the editing and layers panels that normally appear on the right hand side of the Affinity Photo 2 app. See picture attached. Does anyone have any idea on how to get them back? thanx