4/30/24 4/30/24

Photographing Nesting Birds

This morning on a walk not far from my home in Lexington, Massachusetts, I found a Red-bellied Woodpecker’s nest! It’s that exciting time of year when birds in New England are nesting or preparing to nest, and us photographers have chances capture the associated bird behavior, which is always special.

Just remember whether you are photographing or just observing nesting birds, be super sensitive to the birds’ well-being. Pay close attention to their behavior, and make sure you are at a distance where the birds are comfortable approaching to swap incubation duties or make food deliveries to chicks. As long as you do it responsibly, finding and observing nesting birds is a very rewarding way to enjoy spring!

Below are a few images of nesting birds I’ve had a chance to photograph close to home over the past couple years. I’m excited to see what new opportunities this spring will bring!

Featured Image: The Landing

A tree swallow comes in for a landing at its nest, — A tree swallow comes in for a landing at its nest opening as its mate looks out, ready to swap. The great thing about photographing birds visiting their nests is that you get multiple chances to capture the shot you are after. The timing is tricky of course with small fast moving birds like this. The approach is basically to fire a burst of images as you see the bird come in for a landing. I usually don’t even look through the viewfinder in situations like this, but frame up the shot on a tripod, and then watch the movements of the birds, and start firing early as they approach so I don’t miss the shot. The goal is to catch the wings in a nice position like this, and the extra bonus of the mate peering out really makes the shot.

A Few More Nesting Birds from New England

A male pileated woodpecker visits its nest in a dead pine to feed its ravenous chicks.

Barn swallows nesting in a barn in southern Massachusetts made for a fun and easy to shoot subject, since they were accustomed to people and horses coming in and out and paid no attention to me with my camera.

This bluebird is delivering food to its chicks in its nest in a dead white birch tree, in an old woodpecker hole. Woodpeckers create nest cavities used by many other species of birds.

Here you can see the same nest from a different angle, as the male bluebird enters with food.

For you photographers out there, are you keen to get out and do more bird photography this spring? If you are working on mastering your camera skills, I have a course for you called “Birds, Camera, Action”. Or perhaps you are ready to get more creative and take your photography to the next level? I have a course for you called “Getting Creative”

As always, thanks for tuning in, and for your support of my work and the causes I support. Spring is here so be sure to get out and enjoy it!

Warmest regards,
Tim Laman

10/27/23 10/27/23

Fall Splendor in New England

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.

Autumn at Walden Pond

Clouds are reflected in the glass-calm of water as the rising sun lights up the forest along the Western end of the pond.

Mist rises from the surface of the water as the sun breaks over the trees on the far side of Walden Pond.

Updates from the Studio

Calendars: We have created six different bird-themed calendars for your personal enjoyment or gifting needs this holiday season. The Birds-of-Paradise Collections were in the store last year, but the others are all new. Hope you enjoy them.

Bird Photography Masterclass - The Creative Process: My premise in creating this online course is that while there are many places you can learn the basics of photography and how to use your camera, I believe I have unique insights to offer on the most important part of making images - the artistic, creative aspect. I decided to focus on birds, since birds are everywhere, and I hope to inspire more people to go out and photograph birds and and share their love of nature and the need to protect bird habitats. Stay tuned and I’ll let you know when we launch the course!

Windowsight: If you haven’t checked out Windowsight, I highly recommend it. It is a way to turn your black TV screen into a place to display art. You can choose from over 100 of my favorite images, and thousands from other artists. It’s a new concept, but I think is sure to catch on. After all, why have a big black screen dominating a room, when it could be showing art? They are looking for fellow visionaries right now, who want to get a lifetime membership, and help this startup get going. Check them out HERE

Tim demonstrates how you can use the Windowsight App to choose the image that displays as art on your TV.

Thanks or tuning in as always, and hope you are getting out and enjoying some time in nature!

Warmest regards,

Tim

11/1/21 11/1/21

Maine's Fall Splendor

I hope you are all doing well, and if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, have been able to get out and enjoy the fall season. Since I’m not traveling internationally quite yet, I took the chance to spend time up in Maine earlier this month, where the fall foliage this year was quite extraordinary, and I thought I’d take this chance to share a few of my new images.

You can also scroll down and check out my latest idea on how to share my images and spread our shared love of birds. I’ve created a line of 5x7 inch greeting cards featuring my backyard birds-in-the-snow and other images. Have a look and maybe you’ll find one that will make a perfect holiday card.

My timing was perfect on my trip to Acadia National Park this October, and the fall colors were at their peak. After passing Upper Hadlock Pond and seeing the potential for a beautiful image of the hillside with the amazingly variety of color in the trees, I kept checking back to try to get the right conditions. I actually waited till after sunset on this day, when the afterglow reflecting from clouds in the West lit the scene evenly. The wind also died at sunset, as often happens, and I got the perfect reflection that I was hoping for. For you photography enthusiasts who like to hear these details, I made the broad panoramic image below taking a series of seven vertical images, each about 50% overlapping, and used Lightroom to stitch them together. Since nothing was moving in the scene, this worked beautifully, and the result is very high resolution file that I could easily print ten feet across if I wanted. The square portion above it just a section from the center of the larger image. I love the amazing variety of hues of yellow, orange, pink, and red that came out in the trees under this soft light. And of course, a perfect reflection just ads a lot to an image.

Loons In The Fall

Some of you may recall that last summer, I spent considerable time in Maine filming loons for our short film “Loons of Mount Desert Island”. (You can see it here if you missed it). In October, the loons had not left yet for the winter, so I went to check on them and photograph them amidst the fall color reflections.

This adult is molting to its winter plumage, and you can see the bold black and white summer markings beginning to be replaced by the more muted winter feathers.

Juvenile loons, like the one you see here in the middle (easily recognized by its pale bill) will soon make the bold move of leaving their natal lake and their parents, and flying off to the ocean to spend the winter.

It was spectacular to see the loons swimming among the colorful fall reflections in the lake. Adult loons may remain on the lakes for several more weeks, but need to leave before the lake freezes over for the winter. They will spend the winter in the ocean before returning again in the spring, often to their same territory, to pair up and breed again.

NEW IN OUR STORE - HOLIDAY CARDS

For those of you who have shown so much appreciation for my pandemic project photographing my backyard birds, especially in the snow, thank you! You have inspire me to create a line of cards that are now available in my store. They are beautifully printed 5x7 inch cards that I hope will solve your greeting card needs for the holidays, and let you share these backyard beauties with others. You can see the full selection and place orders here.

Thanks for tuning in to my adventures. Fall isn’t over yet, so I hope these images might inspire you to head outside! It’s a beautiful time of year.

Warmest regards,

Tim Laman

PS. I will be launching my annual HOLIDAY PRINT SALE in the next week or so at TimLamanFineArt.com. So if you’re starting to think about your holiday shopping, please stay tuned!

8/23/21 8/23/21

The Making of "Loons of Mount Desert Island".

It’s been a crazy year, but one of the perks for me has been working closer to home, and spending more time with family. Last summer, I took on a project from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to film the early lives of Common Loons up in Maine, and my children Russell and Jessica, 20 and 16 at the time, were my crew. We maintained our “covid bubble” while working out of a small cabin on Mount Desert Island. Loons are spectacular and fascinating birds, and it was an amazing experience to spend so much quality time with them every day as we worked to tell their story. Russell and I did the filming, and Jessica helped out in the field, made sketches and behavior observations, and then narrated the film. So it was a true family project. We are really happy with the result, and I think you’ll enjoy spending ten minutes with us as we explore the loon’s world. The link is below…. Enjoy!

I’ve also selected a couple of my favorite still frames from the shoot to share here, and you can scroll down further to see a bunch of behind the scenes shots from the trip, and learn a bit more about how we filmed the loons in Maine.

**“Loon Birthday”**
This baby loon emerged from its egg during the night or early morning, and after a few hours in the nest, without ever being fed, walked down the ramp into the water and started swimming after its parents. By afternoon they were feeding it small fish. Loons rarely go on land except to breed. They are strictly water birds, and this chick is no exception. It may never set foot on land again until it begins nesting as a full adult. It was amazing to witness and film the first day of this little chicks life, and the film features a sequence of it being fed its first fish.

**“Afternoon Loons”**
Beautiful afternoon light sweeps across Echo Lake as the loon chicks ride on mom’s back while dad starts to rise up for a wing flap in the background. Between feeding bouts, the loon family rests on the water, preens, and naps. What I like about this frame is the way multiple elements came together to elevate the shot above the ordinary: light, behavior, composition, story.…

LOONS OF MOUNT DESERT ISLAND

View the short film here

The Making of "Loons of Mount Desert Island"

Filming from shore, we often tried to work our way ahead of the loons and take up positions so as they moved along the edge of the lake, hunting in the shallows, they would pass by us. This was a very effective strategy in places where there were multiple access points, but did mean a lot of scrambling with the heavy gear along rough trails around the lake. We often put our tripods right in the shallow water to get the best angle, as you see me doing here.

Jessica developed her interest and skills in sketching from nature during this trip. This is a sample page from her journal, and a view of her sketching live in the field. While of course worthwhile and enjoyable in its own right, her sketching also added a nice element to the film.

The less glamorous part of wildlife photography. People often tell me they would love to be my assistant, but Jessica and Russell know what it’s actually like. Here they are hauling heavy tripods and backpacks of camera gear to one of the filming locations on Somes Pond. To create the best quality film, you need to use solid tripods and big heavy lenses. Getting these to the right spot for filming can be physically demanding, but it’s all part of a days work in the field.

It was a wonderful experience working as a family team, and spending so much quality time with the loons to work on this project. We couldn’t have done it though without the help and support from Billy Helprin of the Somes-Meynell Wildlife Sanctuary (www.somesmeynell.org), who monitored all the breeding loons on Mount Desert Island and generously shared his knowledge with us. Please check them out and give your support to this worthy organization that does so much for loons. We also would like to thank Acadia National Park for their support and providing access, and of course the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, who sponsored the project and made it possible.

We will continue to add new images and galleries to TimLamanFineArt.com. Our latest additions include a new Hummingbird gallery. Please check it out!

Tim Laman

1/29/21 1/29/21

Dear Friends,

I’d like to wish you all belated greetings for the New Year. It’s been a rather rocky start here in the USA to say the least, but I’m optimistic that better times are ahead, and that by some time later this year, we will be able to resume international travel, gathering in groups, and many other things that we have had to put on hold in 2020.

As I reflect back on 2020, one of the biggest changes for me was not spending a huge chunk of the year far from home on photography projects. A big plus however, was more time with family, and finding photography projects closer to home. One highlight was being able to work with my son and daughter as my crew for a Cornell Lab of Ornithology project filming Loons in Acadia National Park last summer. Our short film is in the works, and I’ll be looking forward to sharing that with you all as soon as it’s available. So in celebration of that, here is a heart-felt greeting from the Laman crew in the field:

Tim Laman with daughter Jessica and son Russell after a morning session filming Loons at Echo Lake, Acadia National Park, Maine.

WINDOWSIGHT - STREAM ART TO YOUR TV!

Here is something new you might enjoy in this new year. A brand new App called Windowsight allows you to turn your HD TV screen into a place to display art. Think of all the time your screen is just a black rectangle in a prominent place in your home. With the Windowsight app, you can display artworks from TIM LAMAN FINE ART or choose from many other photographers and visual artists. Check them out at www.windowsight.com (or @windowsight on Instagram) and get the app in the app store. You can try it out for free for the first week, and get three months for the price of one with my discount code “TIMLAMAN”.

Windowsight App simulation: You can stream images from your phone App to your large screen TV and enjoy Tim Laman Fine Art images in a new way.

OUR CONSERVATION PARTNERS THANK YOU

One thing I am happy about for 2020, thanks to many of you who purchased prints from me during my fundraising sales, is that I was able to make charitable donations to support Bird-of-Paradise and Orangutan conservation by our partners in Indonesia.

Birds-of-Paradise Fundraiser: I donated $4XXX to the small Indonesian NGO Papua Konservasi dan Komunitas, which took no overhead, and distributed the aid directly to the families in several villages in West Papua as several rounds of staple food supplies. In this way we were able to provide some direct help families that have been protecting their forest to create an economy around birding tourism, but have been struggling during covid due to the lack of visitors.

Orangutan Fundraiser: I donated $14,861 to Save Wild Orangutans, the proceeds from our very successful holiday print sale thanks to many of you, and to the surprising popularity of the image “Live Streaming, Borneo 2020” (below), which seems to have captured the way people felt about 2020, (or perhaps just filled a need I hadn’t realized was out there for bathroom decor). In any case, the funds went to support the programs of the Gunung Palung Orangutan Project focused on safeguarding one of the critical and most significant populations of Bornean Orangutans. To learn more about their activities please visit SaveWildOrangutans.org where you can also learn about how to be an ongoing contributor, which I’d encourage you to do.

“Live Streaming - Borneo 2020” was our most popular print sold during our 2020 holiday print fundraiser.

So a huge thank you once again to all of you who supported these conservation groups and I hope the prints on your wall will be a pleasant reminder of some good we were able to do during the crazy year of 2020. I will plan to have more print fundraisers later this year, so please keep that in mind and drop us a note any time if you have questions at studio@timlaman.com.

With all the best for a healthy, safe, and inspiring year ahead.

Warmest regards,

Tim Laman

PS. We will continue to add new images and galleries to TimLamanFineArt.com throughout the year, so be sure to take a look from time to time and see what’s new. Thanks!

12/18/20 12/18/20

Once In A Blue Moon

Dear Friends,

I’m sure you have all heard the expression “Once in a Blue Moon”, but did you know that a blue moon refers to the second full moon that falls in one calendar month? This is pretty rare, occurring only about once every 2.5 years, but we had one recently on Oct 30, and I happened to be in the right place to photograph it. Not that a blue moon looks any different than any other full moon, but still, the novelty of it added an element of interest. This second full moon of October coincided with our first snowfall here in Massachusetts, and while it was snowing in the evening and the moon was not visible on Oct 30, I went before sunrise the next morning to one of my local haunts, Walden Pond, planning to photograph the sunrise after the fresh snow. When I got there, still well before sunrise, I saw the full moon setting over the pond and raced to get set up and get a few shots before it disappeared. The pond had not yet frozen, so the water, being warmer than the air, was creating a beautiful mist over the lake. Combined with the fresh snow and moon, it was a very atmospheric scene, and I felt very lucky to be there to witness it that morning and capture the image below. You make your own luck, as they say, and that certainly applies in nature photography!

Blue Moon over Walden

The full moon setting over Walden Pond on the morning after our first snowfall of the season. Concord, Massachusetts, Oct 31, 2020.

New Book Release:

I’m honored to share that I am a part of a new book that has just been published:

HUMAN NATURE: PLANET EARTH IN OUR TIME

As describe by the publisher, “In Human Nature, 12 of today's most influential nature and conservation photographers address the biggest environmental concerns of our time. Alongside their reflections, they present curated selections from their photographic careers in a powerful call to awareness and action.”

It is an honor to be part of this crowd: Joel Sartore, Paul Nicklen, Ami Vitale, Brent Stirton, Frans Lanting, Brian Skerry, Tim Laman, Cristina Mittermeier, J Henry Fair, Richard John Seymour, George Steinmetz, and Steve Winter.

It is now available in several international editions. Learn more at:
https://www.blackwellandruth.com/human-nature

As the year winds down, there are good signs of hope for a better year ahead for all of us and for the planet. Here’s looking ahead to 2021. Thanks for joining me on the journey.

Peace,

Tim

11/25/20 11/25/20

Backyard Bird Inspiration

Finding inspiration in nature, and sharing it with others, is part of everything I do. This crazy Covid year has given me a chance to find some of that inspiration closer to home, and I wanted to share a little with you this week. Like many of you I’m sure, I have had bird feeders in my back yard for years. But I haven’t focused much effort on photographing the birds that frequent my yard. When it snowed back in April though, and then again in late October in a freak early snowstorm here in Massachusetts, the peaceful, beautiful backdrop for these common birds really got me going on photographing them. So please enjoy the images below.

When you take time to pay attention and learn more about your backyard birds, you’ll find they’re pretty amazing, like I a few things I learned reading more about chickadees that I share below.

Backyard Beauties

Blue Jay on a Snowy Day. Blue Jay feathers have structural color that reflect blue light, and almost seem to glow in certain even lighting like this.

Cardinal on Snow Covered Branches. Although I’ve traveled the world seeking out exotic birds, I’m still stunned by the color of the cardinals!

Black-capped Chickadees. Active, acrobatic, curious, resilient little songbirds that can somehow survive cold winters despite only weighing 12 grams. Here are some fun chickadee facts I learned from Cornell’s All About Birds website, and Jennifer Ackerman’s great book “The Bird Way” (highly recommended by the way):
• Chickadees hide seeds to eat later. Each item is placed in a different spot, and they can remember thousands of hiding places.
• Every autumn, Chickadees allow neurons with old information to die, and grow new ones to store new information (like where they put all those seeds).
• Chickadee calls are complex and language-like, including predator alarms and contact calls, and even including subtleties like the number of “dee-dee-dees” at the end of the call indicating the level of threat. Other species of birds cue in to and understand their alarm calls as well.
• Seeing a chickadee print on your wall can make you smile and give you a jolt of inspiration (I made that one up, but its true).

Thanks for your following along. Enjoy your own backyard birds wherever you may be, and stay safe everyone!
Tim

11/2/20 11/2/20

Filming Loon Families in Acadia

Dear Friends,

As I reported in my last newsletter, I had a chance to spend time filming in Maine’s Acadia National Park and vicinity for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology this summer. Besides peregrine falcons, the other primary focus was to document breeding pairs of loons and their chicks. This was a partnership with the Somes-Meynell Wildlife Sanctuary [www.somesmeynell.org] who not only allowed us to film on their private reserve near the park, but also helped guide us to good locations for filming other pairs of loons on territories all over Mt. Desert Island, so a huge thanks goes out to Billy Helprin of Somes-Meynell.

Our video for the Cornell Lab is currently in production, but in the mean time, I’d like to share a few images. Loons are an iconic species of the North, and a true indicator of a healthy environment, and it was a pleasure to spend time with them. A real highlight was being able to see chicks from hatching through several weeks of age, and document their rapid growth and development. Enjoy!

Featured Photos

Loon chicks leave the nest the day they hatch, and can immediately swim, like this one-day-old with its attentive parents.

Loon parents work hard to feed their chicks, and they grow rapidly, but sometimes the fish come so fast, they can’t get the chicks to take another bite.

When not feeding, it’s either rest on mom’s back, or practice swimming, and flapping those tiny wings! These chicks are only four days old.

Nice afternoon light catches the loon family as the chicks rest on mom, and dad in the back is about to stretch is wings after a busy afternoon of feeding.

Photo Notes: Like the falcon images in my last newsletter, these images are all still frames from motion capture on my RED Digital Cinema 8K camera. Can’t wait to share the moving images with you in our upcoming short film!

Behind the Scenes

Most of our loon filming was done from shore because filming requires using a sturdy tripod. But at this site, I shot from a kayak, with my tripod in the shallow water – it was the only way to get a view of a loon nest!

Labor Day Print Sale to Benefit Papua - Starts Friday September 4th.

Some of you may recall that last spring I ran a print sale to raise funds for the local people in Papua (the land of birds-of-paradise) who lost their income due to covid and the lack of birders and photographers like me visiting. Thanks to you, we distributed over $3000 in aid directly to over a dozen village families we work with in the form of unemployment compensation and food care packages of rice and other staples. Of course, we all hoped the pandemic would be under control and international visitors would be traveling to Papua again by now, but this obviously hasn’t happened. So we would really like to be able to continue to give these folks some support.

So on Sep. 4 I’m launching another print sale on my Tim Laman Fine Art store to raise funds for Papua. Once again, I’ll donate 50% of Bird-of-Paradise print proceeds to the local people in Papua who look after their forests as a way to have a livelihood from guiding birding trips. By helping these people, your purchase will also help safeguard the forests of Papua for the birds. Thanks for your support!

If you are collecting my “Birds-of-Paradise Square Prints” series, then you will be happy to note we have added new images to the collection, including those above, a new image of the Greater BoP in display and the Vogelkop Superb BoP

Thanks for reading, and stay safe everyone!
Tim

11/1/20 11/1/20

Pursuing Peregrine Falcons in Acadia

Dear Friends,

This summer, my travels for several international projects were of course put on hold, but an opportunity came up with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to film birds in Acadia National Park. I needed a team to assist me, and fortunately my two children, 16 year old Jessica, and 19 year old Russell, were home and available. They have had many years experience assisting me in the field, so with my “quaranteam” in place and our negative covid tests in hand, we headed to Maine to isolate ourselves in the mountains and attempt to film peregrine falcons.

Acadia National Park is one of the places where the critically endangered peregrine falcon was re-introduced to the wild in the 1980’s, and has been successfully breeding since the early 90’s. With the park biologists unable to do fieldwork this year due to covid, our mission was to visit two of the cliff-top breeding sites, and document how many juvenile birds had fledged, and to try to capture some footage of the young birds for a video to be produced by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Stay tuned for that later this fall, but in the mean time, here are a few images I can share of these amazing birds.

Featured Photos

Adults like this bird only passed by a couple times a day, but were clearly distinct with their black head and white neck.

Here you can see in detail the juvenile plumage of a falcon as it comes right toward me. The juveniles still used the cliffs where their nest had been as their home base, and came back repeatedly throughout the day.

I was lucky enough to capture a moment when two juveniles briefly flew together. It was amazing to see the maneuverability and speed of these birds in the air, including sudden dives, turns, and even back flips. If they decided to go into a dive and drop out of the frame, it was impossible to track them.

Looking down towards from above Valley Cove, I got this shot of a young falcon over the beautiful water of Somes Sound.

We had a couple lucky moments when young falcons landed in trees near us on the cliff top. Russell captured this shot of a bird stretching his wings before takeoff.

For the photography nerds in the group, these images are all still frames from motion capture on my RED Digital Cinema Helium 8K camera, shot at 6K and 75fps at a 1/150 sec shutter speed. While many frames of course have motion blur that makes the video flow naturally, there are moments when my focus, camera panning, and the birds motion all align and the frame is tack sharp. Since each frame of 6K RED footage is a 20 megapixel RAW file, they are totally usable as still images matching the best digital SLR in quality. Pretty amazing how far camera tech has come! I can’t wait to share the finished video with you all through Cornell later this year.

Behind the Scenes Shots

One highlight was when Jessica and I were exploring for viewpoints along the cliff top, and this juvenile falcon landed in front of us. Jessica hauled the heaviest tripod up the mountain, and was our chief bird spotter.

Gallery Update:

LIMITED EDITIONS: COMING SOON! -- The major project we are currently working on in the studio is preparing a selection of my very best images from twenty-five years of wildlife photography to offer as LIMITED EDITION collector’s prints. These will be offered as 48 inches or 60 inches in width (large!), printed on archival aluminum, framed and signed, and have an edition of only 10 or 20 artworks. We are very pleased with how our test prints have come out, and we are now working on the website prior to our launch.

Thanks for reading. Despite these crazy times, I hope you are getting outside like I am to enjoy wildlife and nature wherever you can!

Stay safe everyone!
Tim