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.

Wildlife Diaries

Fall Splendor in New England

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The fall colors have just peaked where I live in Massachusetts.  I hope wherever you are you have been enjoying the change of the seasons.  After a lot of time overseas this year, it has been nice to be at home for a while this fall.  What do I do when I’m not out on assignment, you ask?  A few things that have been keeping me busy are:

  • Editing a National Geographic magazine story, coming out in Feb. 2024.
  • Developing a pitch for a new orangutan documentary.
  • Creating a new online Masterclass in Bird Photography (sneak peak below).
  • Furthering my partnership with Windowsight – a way to display my photographs on your blank TV.
  • Creating six different bird-themed calendars for the holiday season.

But when I need my nature fix, I head out into the woods, often to my favorite local haunt, Walden Pond.  It’s always possible to find beauty and inspiration even at this modest natural area outside Boston.  Below you’ll find a few images that I made there within the past week.

Walden Pond Double Sunrise

It was the first night of the season when the thermometer dipped to freezing, and since the water was still much warmer than the air, I knew there would be early morning mist on Walden Pond.  I arrived before sunrise, and hiked around, looking for interesting compositions.  This brilliant maple caught my attention, backlit by the rising sun.  By moving my camera position slightly, I could control the sunburst effect, created when sunbeams pass through a small gap in the leaves directly into the lens.  To my surprise, I discovered a camera position where I got two sunbursts – one from the sun itself, and another from the suns’ reflection in the glass-calm pond surface.  The result is the image you see here – my favorite from that beautiful morning.

“Walden Pond Double Sunrise” is not in the print store yet, but if anyone is interested in a print, just drop us a quick note at studio@timlaman.com.

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Into the Mangroves – Papua Expedition Highlights Part 3

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Dear Friends,

Have you ever seen a mangrove forest?  These habitats defined by trees that can withstand saltwater are incredibly fascinating and important.  Not only do they harbor their own unique biodiversity, but they protect coastlines, are nursery grounds for marine life, and are incredibly good at sequestering carbon.  In fact research shows they store five times more carbon than forests on land!

On our Cornell Lab expedition to West Papua over the summer, in collaboration with our Indonesian partners, we were able to visit and document one of the largest mangrove forests in the world, in a place called Bintuni Bay.  Indonesia harbors over 25% of the world’s mangroves, and over half of that is in Papua, where Bintuni Bay is one of the prime examples.

It was a challenge to capture the scale of these vast forests, but aerial images helped, and I hope you enjoy the glimpse of this unique forest and a few of its inhabitants in the images below.  If you want to learn more about mangroves, I’ll leave some links at the bottom.  

The Vast Mangroves of Bintuni

From the air, the mangrove forests of Bintuni seem to stretch on as far a you can see, cut by a maze winding tidal channels (in fact I was amazed our boatman could keep track of where we were and find the way back after hours of meandering).  Although mangroves in many parts of the world have been exploited or degraded for coastal development, shrimp farms, charcoal harvesting, and other reasons, this region, with great foresight, is being protected by the Indonesian government.  (This image is a stitched panoramic image made with the help of licensed Indonesian drone pilot Faizal Aziz.)

[Read more…] about Into the Mangroves – Papua Expedition Highlights Part 3

Birds-of-Paradise and Strangler Figs – Papua Expedition Highlights Part 2

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Following our pursuit of the Leatherback Sea Turtles that I shared in the last Wildlife Diaries, our team moved into the interior of Western Papua, where we immersed ourselves in the riches of the lowland rainforest at a small village called Malagufuk.  From our base at a small guesthouse, it was a matter of a few steps and we were in the forest.  Our main targets were several species of Birds-of-Paradise, but we also hoped to film other lowland specialists, like crowned pigeons, hornbills, and even cassowaries if we were lucky.

However, the plant life could not to be ignored!  The forest abounded with spectacularly large strangler figs and many beautiful species of palms, so we also spent time trying to photograph and film them in interesting ways.  You can see a few of my efforts below as well as a few bird shots.  Western Papua, and the entire giant island of New Guinea of which it is a part, still harbors vast areas of forest, which is heart-warming to see as a conservationist.  Our main objective of this expedition in fact was to bring attention to this globally important area, which represents the largest intact rainforest region in the entire Asia-Pacific, and the third biggest in the world after the Amazon and Congo basins.  Both as a carbon store, and for its rich and relatively understudied biodiversity, these forests represent a global treasure.

Hope you enjoy the glimpses below into the lowland forest of Papua!

Inside the Strangler Fig

To capture this image, I stepped within the myriad of roots, and pointed my camera straight up.  I was in the space once occupied by the host tree, long since rotted away.  I’ve been fascinated with strangler figs ever since I first went to Borneo, and in fact I did my PhD research on fig ecology in Borneo’s rainforest.  These trees start life as a seedling sprouting high on a host tree, their seed perhaps delivered in a bird dropping.  They send roots down to the ground, and in the case of this species (there are many species of figs with different growth forms) the roots wrap the host tree so tightly that it eventually dies and rots away.  The fig keeps growing and spreading ever wider roots, creating the incredible and rather artistic structure you see here.

[Read more…] about Birds-of-Paradise and Strangler Figs – Papua Expedition Highlights Part 2

Quest for the Leatherback Sea Turtle – Papua Expedition Highlights Part 1

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I recently completed a month-long expedition in West Papua, Indonesia documenting biodiversity highlights across various habitats from forest-lined coasts to mountain peaks.  I’d like to share a few highlights of the expedition in the next several Wildlife Diaries.

Our first objective was to document Leatherback Sea Turtles at a place called Batu Rumah Beach, a 24 km stretch on the north coast of Papua’s Bird’s Head Peninsula where according to researchers, 75% of the entire Pacific Ocean population of Leatherbacks come to nest.  Having never seen a Leatherback before – the largest of all sea turtles – I was especially excited about this opportunity.  We worked closely with the research team from the University of Papua in Manokwari, who monitor the beach nightly from three patrol stations spaced out along this remote, roadless coast.  It was challenging work, hiking at least 10 km each night in sand to try to catch sight of a turtle that we could film and photograph.  In the end we succeeded, and I hope the images below capture a sense of the awe we felt at witnessing this remarkable creature carrying out its timeless ritual of reproduction.

This expedition was supported by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and with our local partners in Indonesia, our hope is to spread the word through the media we create about the global importance of Papua’s unique environment, one of the treasures of Indonesia’s biodiversity.  The Leatherback turtles that nest here feed on jellyfish off the coast of North America, where conservationists are also working to protect the species.  These sea turtles thus connect Papua with the United States, on the other side of the vast Pacific.  Below is just a little sneak preview of what we captured.  I’ll be sure to let you know when the finished media are released.

Leatherback Nesting by Moonlight

On our third night of hiking Batu Rumah Beach in search of Leatherbacks, we got lucky.  It was a beautiful moonlit night, and we found this turtle starting to lay her eggs.  We got our cameras ready at a distance while waiting until she had finished laying.  Then, while she spent considerable time burying her nest and spreading sand all around to camouflage it, we moved in to shoot.  I ran time-lapses for stills, and shot motion on my RED V-Raptor camera, while my assistants Faizal Aziz and Wahyu Susanto helped with lighting with our red lights, and shooting detail shots with the RED Komodo.  It was a whirlwind of activity during those few minutes, and we barely had a chance to appreciate what we were witnessing before she started heading for the sea.  But when she stopped and came back up to do some more sand flinging, we took a moment to really appreciate the amazing animal in front of us.  

This image is a frame form my time-lapse series.  For you photography nerds out there, these were my settings for this image:  Canon EOS R6 Mark II camera, RF 15-35 mm lens, 1/4 Sec at f 2.8, ISO 5000, processed in Lightroom with denoise, and with the lower half of the image masked and desaturated to remove the supplemental red lights (see example below).

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Celebrating Biodiversity of the World’s Richest Reefs

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Greetings and happy “World Biodiversity Day” on May 22.

For me, every day is a day to appreciate and celebrate the amazing diversity of life that we share this planet with, but it’s good to have these reminders about what’s important.  As you know, I am especially drawn to the richest habitats on the planet – rain forests and coral reefs.  

So this week I thought I’d share a few images from one of my favorite places, the Raja Ampat Islands of Indonesia, which are a spectacular example of both these ecosystems.  This area not only has the world’s richest coral reefs below water, but the rainforest-covered islands are home to birds-of-paradise, and many other species.  And not only that, this is one of the rare places where rainforest comes right down to meet the sea.  These limestone islands produce little silt and the waters are bathed by rich currents, so corals can literally grow right beneath overhanging tree branches, like in the image below.

As I prep to head back to Indonesia once again this summer to work on a filming project with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in West Papua, I’ll leave you with a few favorite images celebrating the rich diversity of Raja Ampat.  Enjoy and have a great summer.  

Between the two islands named Waigeo and Gam, there is a tidal channel that surges with current whenever the tide changes.  If you catch it at the right time as clear water races in, it is possible to capture an over-under view showing both the forest above, and the rich soft coral growth below.  For this shot, I waited for a pair of archerfish to swim through the frame.  This is the perfect habitat for them, where branches hang low to the water, and they can hunt insects in the trees with a jet of water, knocking them into the sea.  Now wouldn’t that be a cool wide angle shot?  I’ll have to work on that one. 
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Emperor Penguin Encounters

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Dear Friends,
I’ve been back for a few weeks from an amazing journey to Antarctica, and finally getting around to sharing some more from the trip.
Emperor penguins were a surprise and a huge highlight for me! As we traveled south into the Ross Sea, we encountered them in ones and twos, and then in bigger groups. At up to 46 kg (nearly 100 lbs), the Emperor Penguin is one of the world’s heaviest birds, only exceeded in weight by Ostriches, Cassowaries, and Emus. Seeing the power with which these birds can launch their chunky bodies out of the water was remarkable. Check out the photos and videos below!
And if you’re an underwater photographer curious about the photo workshop I’m offering in Indonesia’s Raja Ampat islands in August, please tap the link down at the bottom and check out the details.

The Preening Emperor

Coulman Island vicinity, Ross Sea, AntarcticaAs our zodiac boat approached the iceberg where the Emperor was standing, it completely ignored us and just kept preening. I was glad the bird was bending over, preening its belly feathers, creating a more interesting composition. In the soft light, every detail was visible, from the birds jet black eye, to the snowflakes stuck to its breast feathers. I spend so much time photographing shy birds that I have to shoot from blinds, that it was a joy to be so close to a bird that didn’t mind our presence. I captured this image, but also savored the moment.
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