Tim Laman

| Wildlife Photojournalist

Wildlife Diaries

The Wildlife Diaries newsletter is the best way to keep up to date with Tim Laman’s latest work and travels, and to learn about photography and natural history as well. Read through his recent posts here or sign up to receive the posts via email using the form on the right.

Orangutans

A New Baby Orangutan and Happy New Year 2023!

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Dear Friends,

Happy New Year, and all the best to everyone for 2023!

As we kick off the new year, I have some exciting news from my recent trip to Borneo.  On Dec 11, as I was already packing up to depart the next morning from the research station in Gunung Palung National Park, I got word that one of the field assistants had found the female orangutan named Berani, and that she had a new baby!  Luckily, I was able to rearrange my travel to spend two days photographing Berani and her new baby before traveling home.  

Berani and her new baby, photographed on Dec 12, 2022.
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Back to Borneo!

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Hello Friends,

Greetings from the rain forest of Borneo!  I’m writing this on my iPhone while sitting under a fruiting fig tree where the orangutan mom and juvenile we have been following have been feeding for the past couple hours, unfortunately their position is high and obstructed. Thus I have some down time here to catch you up on my latest news. 

This is my first trip back to Gunung Palung National Park since before the pandemic and it’s good to be back.  Just this morning gibbons, macaques, and orangutans have all been feeding at this tree as well as at least a dozen species of birds, including the colorful barbets, several species of which are just now calling incessantly above. 

I’m here with my wife Cheryl Knott who directs the Gunung Palung Orangutan Project and her team of students and assistants. My 18 year old daughter Jessica is working with Cheryl on her project, and my 22 year old son Russell is assisting me with filming orangutans for another major production.  It’s great to be here with the whole family and all our Indonesian colleagues working to spread the word about the amazing biodiversity that is protected in this sanctuary. 

Rhinoceros Hornbills In The Canopy
This image of rhinoceros hornbills high in the canopy of the lowland rainforest in Gunung Palung is one of my all time favorites that I made from a blind high in the canopy near a fruiting fig tree.  I love capturing shots of the rain forest wildlife in the broader landscape and the mist hovering in the canopy on this early morning created the perfect atmosphere for the image.

I’ll be spending at least three months in the field here this year also working on a major National Geographic magazine feature about Gunung Palung’s amazingly intact flora and fauna that represents the full diversity of lowland rainforest species in Borneo. 

So please stay tuned and I’ll keep sending periodic updates. It’s not easy to upload new photos from here as I have no internet connection and just enough signal to send this note out by WhatsApp to my assistant back in the US. So she will add some images from my GP archives to this newsletter and I’ll look forward to sharing new images when I can. 

Long-tailed Macaque (Macaca fascicularis) in the canopy of a fruiting strangler fig tree (Ficus dubia), surrounded by ripening figs.
Bornean White-bearded Gibbon (Hylobates albibarbis) in the canopy of a strangler fig (Ficus dubia) searching for ripe figs.

Have a good summer everyone, and if you you want to learn more about our conservation work here and don’t already follow us, please check out www.savewildorangutans.com.

Ways You Can Help Orangutans this Giving Tuesday

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Dear Friends,

It’s Giving Tuesday today, and I hope you are giving some thought to how you can help out the causes you care about.  Here at Tim Laman Photography, we are supporting our long-term partner the “Gunung Palung Orangutan Conservation Program” and their campaign “Save Wild Orangutans”.

Here are four ways you can be engaged:

  1. Make a one-time donation HERE.   https://www.savewildorangutans.org/donate/
  2. Join the Team!  Sign up to make a monthly donation HERE.  https://www.savewildorangutans.org/join-the-team/.   As a perk of being a regular donor, even for a small amount like $5 or $10/month, you will receive our “Orangutan Diaries” updates from the field.
  3. Buy an Orangutan print today.  It’s the last day of our Holiday Print Sale, and 50% of profits will be donated directly to Save Wild Orangutans.  Visit my gallery HERE.  https://www.timlamanfineart.com/orangutans
  4. Join my Live Art Sale & Conservation Fundraiser tomorrow, Dec 1 at 6PM Eastern.  I will be selling prints from my inventory here in the studio.  Half of profits from orangutan prints will also be donated to Save Wild Orangutans, and there are many unique orangutan prints in this collection.  Check my Instagram or FB tomorrow Dec 1 for details.

Mist in the Canopy, Gunung Palung

At SAVE WILD ORANGUTANS, the orangutans themselves are of course the key flagship species we focus attention on.  But what wild orangutans need is healthy rainforest habitat like the lowland forest of Gunung Palung, pictured above.  When we work to protect habitat for orangutans, we save the entire spectrum of biodiversity in the rich lowland forests of Borneo.  So please think about that as you contemplate how you can help this Giving Tuesday.  You can learn a lot more about all the ways the team in Indonesia is working toward this goal of forest habitat protection at the main website www.savegporangutans.org.

The Incredible Biodiversity of Gunung Palung

As one of the very best remaining lowland forests in all of Borneo, Gunung Palung harbors an incredible variety of creatures besides orangutans.  Here are just a few examples:

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Orangutan Print Sale for Conservation

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2021 has been another unusual year, but I’m still feeling thankful.  This thanksgiving holiday, I want to help raise awareness and support for Orangutan Conservation in Borneo.  I hope you will take a moment to read on.  

As those of you who have followed my work for a while know, documenting the lives of wild orangutans in partnership with my wife, researcher Cheryl Knott, has been a major part of my life’s work over that past 25 years.  Using the media I create to spread the word in National Geographic articles and films has been a big part of what I do.  But it has now been two years since I was last in Borneo in documenting orangutans.  Yet, we are fortunate that the non-profit group Cheryl founded, now run in Indonesia by an Indonesian team of over thirty people, have been able to persist throughout the pandemic in their conservation, education, and community support activities that all help to protect orangutans in Gunung Palung, one of the world’s most important remaining wild orangutan sanctuaries. 

So I’m very thankful to them and for all their efforts, and I’m dedicating this newsletter and print-sale fundraiser to the Gunung Palung Orangutan Project!

Please scan below for ways you can help this important cause.

That Special Connection
Young orangutans typically spend eight years or more with their mothers, and this is my favorite image that captures that special connection.  I think it is also worth contemplating our close connection to orangutans and their rainforest habitat.  The future of orangutans and all the diverse life on earth is dependent on good decisions being made by us humans who have taken over so much of the planet.  Our individual decisions matter, and supporting groups actively working to accomplish conservation on the ground is one small way we can help.  
This photograph is available as a print along with all the other orangutan images on sale now for my Giving Tuesday fundraiser (I will donate 50% of profits from all orangutan print sales to the Gunung Palung Orangutan Project).

Ways You Can Help Support Orangutans

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Save Wild Orangutans and get a Free Print

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As many of you know, my longest term personal photography project is documenting the orangutans of Gunung Palung, in support of the science and conservation work of my wife Cheryl Knott’s project and her NGO, the Gunung Palung Orangutan Conservation Program (a US 501c3).

So it is my pleasure to offer some free prints to supporters this month.  We are attempting to build some “crowd sourced” funding for the organization, so that we can grow our education and conservation programs in the communities around the park, with the aim of long term forest and buffer zone preservation for orangutans and all the other biodiversity.

I hope you will consider becoming a monthly contributor.  Any small donation is welcome, but if you are able to commit to $10/month or more, you will receive your choice of one of three of my prints shown below in December, in time for Christmas.  So you could keep it for yourself or give it away as a gift!  Please go to this LINK to learn more and sign up. 

You’ll also become a member of our “Save Wild Orangutan” team as a monthly donor, and receive our exclusive updates from the field and blog posts for our members which I think you will enjoy.

Thanks for your consideration of this opportunity!

The Wild Ride
“The Wild Ride” is one of the my favorite orangutan images I have made in Gunung Palung for several reasons.  It tells the story of a mother orangutan traveling through the primary rainforest, which you can tell because of the massive size of the tree trunk in the left side fo the frame.  It shows how she is using large vines, or lianas, as the bridges through this complex canopy of trees, and finally, it shows how a very young infant has to be able to hold on tight to mom’s skin and fur all by herself because mom needs all her hands and feet for locomotion.  It is hard to explain how much effort was needed to capture an image like this.  It involves following the orangutans through the forest all day with the research team carrying camera gear, and looking for gaps through the foliage.  The best views are from hills I’ve scrambled up in steep terrain to be able to get shots that give you the feeling of being in the canopy with the orangutans (like in this shot) and not just looking up from the ground.  All the sweat is worth it though, when a great moment like this presents itself, and I’m able to capture it to share with all of you.

King of the Jungle

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In the Indonesian language, “orangutan” means “person of the forest”.  Of all my orangutan images, I think that this one captures the feeling of that name the most.  When you look into the eyes of this adult male orangutan in his prime, you can’t help wondering what he is thinking, and it is totally understandable that humans who encountered wild orangutans in the forest thought of them as the “people of the forest”.
Purchase “King of the Jungle” on my Fine Art website