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
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
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
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Lets Celebrate the Birds-of-Paradise #4: Blue Bird-of-Paradise
Dear Friends,
I hope you are all well, and staying safe wherever you are. I’m continuing to dig into my archive to share some favorites and some unpublished Bird-of-Paradise images. I’ve chosen the Blue Bird-of-Paradise to feature this week.
Blue Bird-of-Paradise in Fruiting Tree
The Blue Bird-of-Paradise is one of the most legendary of the Birds-of-Paradise because of its phenomenal coloration and relative rarity. I journeyed to the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea to photograph this species, and it turned out to be one of the most challenging I have encountered. This was not because the bird was hard to find, but due to the fact that I wanted to photograph the male performing his courtship display. Displays, I found, were extremely unpredictable. It turned out that unlike some Birds-of-Paradise that are quite reliable once you find a display site (like the Western Parotia I shared in the last Wildlife Diaries), the Blue bird has not one, but many different display perches in the forest. It was almost impossible to be at the right one that he would choose to display at on a given day.
After many days of failure at display sites, I decided to concentrate on photographing at a feeding tree where we had seen the male visiting regularly. Indeed, he came to this tree several times a day, and by waiting him out, I captured a number of interesting feeding shots. This image is my favorite, because he was on a low branch with a clean background, posed at a beautiful angle across the frame, and the light was such that his blue plumage seems to glow from within.
As you can perhaps imagine, as I have traveled around the New Guinea region photographing and filming the many species of Birds-of-Paradise, there have been times when things didn’t work out the way I hoped. My goal is always to capture the courtship behavior, but sometimes that just doesn’t work out in the time I have in the field. The Blue Bird-of-Paradise was one such case. Although my collaborator Ed Scholes succeeded in filming some of the crazy upside down courtship behavior of the male at the sites he monitored on this trip, every time I set up in a blind where Ed or one of our local guides had seen the male display the day before, the bird would display somewhere else that day. I resigned myself to possibly only being able to capture some shots of the bird feeding, but at least wanted to do that well, so I put my time into sitting on a hill overlooking a fruiting tree. This was successful, but I also was in for a surprise one afternoon. I don’t know if it was because he saw a female nearby, or just felt an urge, but the male flew to a nearby tree to my right, and suddenly flipped upside down and started buzzing and shaking his plumes and performing a practice display. I slowly spun my unwieldy 600 mm lens around on my tripod, trying to get the bird framed quickly without making any sudden movements that would alarm him. Fortunately he stayed upside down long enough for me to capture the image below!
I was very pleased to have captured at least a documentary shot of the male in his display pose. At the same time, there is a lot of room for improvement in making an image of this upside-down display. I’d love to have a cleaner background, better light, and a female present, watching him! So while I had to be satisfied with what I got on that trip, I do hope to get back one of these days to have another crack at photographing this incredible species. I think this is one of the most interesting things about pursuing wildlife photography. There is no such thing as a perfect shot. Every image I make, I can always think of ways it could be better. It’s a perpetual quest.
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Lets Celebrate the Wilson's Bird-of-Paradise
Dear Friends,
I’m continuing my celebration of the Birds-of-Paradise this week since it doesn’t look like any of us are going to the field any time soon. I have chosen Wilson’s BoP as the next species to feature from my archive.
Print Giveaway: Like this past week, I’m going to have a drawing at the end of this week to give away a print, this time it will be the first Wilson’s BoP image featured below. If you have received this newsletter, then you are automatically entered. On Friday, we will randomly select one of my newsletter subscribers, and the winner will get an email as well as be announced on my Facebook page.
Wilson’s Bird-of-Paradise, like the Red Bird-of-Paradise featured last week, is a species that is endemic to the Raja Ampat Islands in West Papua off the far western end of New Guinea. Just getting to the island of Batanta, where I first photographed this species in 2004, is quite an adventure in itself. After flying around the world and across Indonesia to the town of Sorong, we still had to make a boat journey to a coastal village, and then find a crew to help carry our gear several hours up a mountainside into the forest. Then we established a camp, and started scouting for the birds.
Wilson’s BoP is one of the smallest, but also most colorful of the BoP’s. One if its most unusual features is its bare blue head skin, but that is only a little more bizarre then its curled central tail feathers, and its amazing color scheme. The key to photographing this remarkable bird was to find an active display court, where a male had cleared the ground of debris, and had chosen a small sapling in the center that he used as his display pole. My goal with this species in particular, was to tell the story of its courtship display, so I really wanted to get images of the male displaying to a female. To do this, I set up a blind near the most promising court we found, and started waiting there each morning at dawn.
Due to the low light early in the morning, and the fact that this was 2004 and I was using early generation DSLR’s, I couldn’t shoot at higher than ISO 400 to maintain the image quality. So I rigged a couple strobes to give me a little fill light. This worked out well, and although the male was a very fast moving little bird, he paused long enough on his perch for me to capture the image above at 1/15 sec, giving me a nice background exposure balanced with a little flash to make his colors pop. In this pose, the male is presenting his bright red back, along with yellow neck and blue head, to a female who is looking down from up in a tree.
The second shot I was after, which I thought would tell the story of the bird’s courtship, was the female perched right above the male looking down at him while he displayed. After a few of these predawn hikes up the mountain to my blind, and moving between a couple different display courts, I succeeded in capturing the image below. I thought it showed the interaction nicely, and you could even see the male shaking his tail. Feeling like I’d accomplished my goal, I switched focus to the Red Bird-of-Paradise for the remainder of that trip. Though satisfied with my shots, little did I know what I was missing by not having a way to shoot from above and capture the female’s point-of-view.
It wasn’t until over ten years later, in 2015, when I had a chance to go back to Raja Ampat to photograph Wilson’s BoP again. Camera technology had improved a lot since 2004, and not only could I shoot in lower light without strobes, but also, I had the ability to control remotely positioned cameras over wifi. This led Ed Scholes and I to come up with a plan to hide a camera on a tree right above the male’s display position, to shoot looking straight down, over the females shoulder. Well, I think the image below that Ed and I made pretty much says it all and it’s fair to say it blew our socks off when we first saw it. We expected green, from the glint off the male’s breast shield, but we had no idea it would be so bright. I think it is very exciting that in 2015 (and even 2020), it is still possible to find subjects in nature to photograph in ways that have never been seen before.
Behind the Scenes Shots:
I may be the one with the camera, but it takes a team for me to get these shots. I have worked closely with ornithologist Ed Scholes since the beginning of our Birds-of-Paradise project, and while I’m sitting in one blind, he is usually out searching for other display sites, or watching and filming other individuals. And of course without our Indonesian support crew and local landowners, we couldn’t find the locations or camp comfortably when we got there. Here are a couple behind the scenes shots from our camp on Batanta Island back in 2004 when I made the featured images above. The late Kris Tindege, a pioneer birding guide in Papua, was our local guide and fixer.
Our camp on Batanta Island. Kris Tindege and local guides cooking dinner over fires. This is a pretty typical setup for how we still camp in the rain forest on our more remote locations.
It was 2004, and actually the first trip where I shot mostly digitally. Being able to download and review images at night, even in our rustic field camp, was a revelation, compared with carrying loads of film back for processing and not knowing what you had. Ed Scholes and Kris Tindege look on while I review some Wilson’s BoP shots.
Lets Celebrate the Red Bird-of-Paradise
Dear Friends,
I hope you are all well, and staying safe wherever you are hunkering down during these unprecedented times. I’m at home and won’t likely be making my usual field trips any time soon, but I find myself thinking about the amazing Birds-of-Paradise that I enjoy photographing and sharing with you so much. They are still out there in the forests of New Guinea doing their thing, and while I can’t be creating fresh images right now, I have an archive with a wealth of imagery and associated stories that might help brighten your day just a little during these crazy times.
So for the coming weeks, I’m going to share a favorite Bird-of-Paradise image each week, and to make it more fun, I’m also going to have a drawing to give away a print of that image each week.
Print Giveaway: If you have received this newsletter, then you are automatically signed up for my weekly Bird-of-Paradise print giveaway. Each Friday, we will randomly select one of my newsletter subscribers to receive a print of that weeks featured image, and announce the winner on my Facebook page.
The Red Bird-of-Paradise is definitely not one of the easiest birds-of-paradise to photograph. It only inhabits a handful of islands off the western tip of New Guinea, in the Indonesian region called the Raja Ampat Islands.
All that my collaborator Ed Scholes and I had to do was to fly half way around the world to Jakarta, then east, hopping islands across Indonesia. Then we travelled by boat with local guides to the island of Batanta, hired porters in a village, hiked up into the mountains and set up a camp. Then we had to find the birds. After a few days, we found where the birds were displaying, but there was just one catch. The display site appeared to be the tallest tree in this whole area. There was plenty of activity, and the location seemed very promising. But the tree climb was going to be a problem. I was going to have to climb this tree in stages.
I was back the next morning after the birds had left. After a few tries shooting a fishing line with my bow and arrow, I got my arrow over one of the large branches that looked like it wasn’t even half way up the tree. It was a start. I pulled up my rope and climbed to that point. Then I used a weight bag on the end of a throw line to toss over higher and higher branches, pulling my rope over and climbing up each time until I was finally up to the level where the birds had been displaying.
As I rose above the crowns of the surrounding trees, an amazing view opened out over the rain forest of Batanta Island. After taking in this view, I kept climbing. I built a blind 50 meters (165 feet) above the ground, the highest I had ever constructed, perched among branches in the opposite side of this giant tree to where the birds display branches were.
Then for several days, rising well before dawn, I hiked to the site and climbed my rope in the dark, hauling my camera and lenses in a pack dangling below me. I distinctly remember one morning, breaking out into the more open upper canopy and seeing an incredible starry sky as I inched up the rope in the blackness with my headlamp off. It was a surreal feeling, like I was climbing a rope into outer space.
The real excitement came though, once I got set up in the blind and it started to get light. The moment came when one male became excited by a nearby female and went to the broken off branch that appeared to be his prime display spot. He turned to face the sunrise and I got this shot. I knew I had seen something special from a viewpoint perhaps never recorded before.
Behind the Scenes Shots: Here are a couple images from that memorable tree climb in Batanta.
Gallery Update: We regularly add new images to my galleries at www.timlamanfineart.com. Recent additions include hummingbirds from Sunnylands added to the open edition paper prints category, and also a collection of favorite East Africa images from my recent trips. Please have a look!
Hope you enjoy these birds and stories, and can also get outside and enjoy the beauty of birds in your own area, wherever you are.
Stay safe everyone!
Tim
Helmeted Hornbills for World Wildlife Day
Helmeted Hornbills have interested me since I first saw one in Borneo in 1987. But it took me years to capture the image I wanted of this spectacular but rare and little known bird of the Southeast Asian rainforest. Read the story below of how I captured this favorite image.
Helmeted Hornbill Landing
For the camera nerds in the group, I shot this on a RED Digital Cinema camera, and it is actually a single frame from motion capture. If you watch the film linked below, you will see the shot that I pulled this from. With this powerful camera, by shooting at 75 frames/sec at 6K resolution, I could not only capture a beautiful motion shot of the bird landing at its nest, but pull the perfect frame as the selected still image.
Helmeted Hornbills have been a major focus of my wildlife photojournalism efforts in recent years. In addition to articles in National Geographic magazine and Living Bird, I collaborated with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Rangkong Indonesia to produce a short film called “Hunting the Helmeted Hornbill”. I’m excited to announce that since premiering last year at Mountainfilm, this film has been circulating to different film festivals. Most recently, it was featured at the New York Wild Film Festival on Feb 29, and then on March 3, World Wildlife Day, it was a finalist in the United Nations Development Program’s film showcase event at UN Headquarters. It’s important and exciting that this film is getting out there and reaching more people. It's 12 minutes long, and features not only footage of wild helmeted hornbills, but tells the story of the poaching pressure they face. If you haven’t viewed it, you can now watch it on the Cornell Lab’s YouTube channel here:
Hunting The Helmeted Hornbill
And please share this film with your network, especially if you have any connections in Asia, where the hornbill products are primarily consumed. We even have a version in Chinese so please reach out if you would like to share that one. The best way we can reduce hornbill poaching is by educating potential consumers about the source of these products and the harm they are doing by buying them. I hope that together we can make a different for this iconic species.
Gallery Update: We regularly add new images to my galleries at www.timlamanfineart.com. Recent additions include hummingbirds from Sunnylands added to the open edition paper prints category, and also a collection of favorite East Africa images from my recent trips. Please have a look!
Warm regards to all!
Tim
Happy New Year Friends!
For a little inspiration as 2020 begins, I’m sharing a favorite winter image of a pair of Japan’s Red-crowned Cranes performing a duet. Considered an auspicious symbol in Japan, cranes also have a lot of meaning for all of us who believe in the importance of protecting nature. Their sheer elegance and beauty is unsurpassed, and I don’t think anyone would want to see them disappear. But they almost did in Japan! Now however, they are an example of a conservation success there, where their population has been brought back from near extermination in the early 1900’s to a healthy breeding population today through human determination and effort.
The challenges that we face to protect nature are many, but I believe we are up to the task if we strive together. Thanks for joining me on my journey as my cameras become our “windows” to see wildlife in some of the remote corners of the world that you may not get to yourselves. Your interest and support make it all worthwhile, and I believe that together, we can spread awareness and make a difference. Here’s to all the possibilities that lie ahead in the New Year for all of us. Lets make it a great one!
Website Update:
I’ve revamped my website with a lot more information about my projects and with new galleries of my work. You can also read my past Wildlife Diaries newsletter posts archived there, and see a lot more behind-the-scenes content. Hope you enjoy it, and maybe find a little inspiration yourselves for your own photography, your conservation endeavors, or life in general!
www.TimLaman.com
The Story of my Sunrise Bird-of-Paradise shot
Dear Friends,
One of the things I’m asked about most often is what went into creating some of my unique images, especially those made at the top of rain forest canopy. So I thought I would share the story behind one of my most iconic images – The Bird-of-Paradise Sunrise – an image that has been used to champion the conservation of rain forests of the New Guinea region.
Making this image required over a week of preparation and lots of tree rigging and climbing. It was made with a remote camera attached to the tree where the birds displayed. I climbed the tree in the dark every morning, and hid the camera by wrapping it in leaves. I controlled the camera from a neighboring tree, where I had constructed a blind with the help of Aru Islanders out of poles and palm fronds, and run a cable from the camera in the display tree over to the blind tree. After rigging the camera I descended to the ground, and then climbed the blind tree (all in the pre-dawn darkness), carrying my laptop up into the canopy, where I connected it to the cable, and used it to remotely control the camera. A wide-angle view of a bird-of-paradise displaying in the canopy like this had been a dream shot of mine for years. On the particular morning when I got this shot, the sun cracked the horizon and lit up the mist just as the Greater Bird-of-Paradise spread his wings overlooking the canopy. I clicked the shutter, and I knew I had something magical. At moments like this, all the effort is forgotten.
The remote camera in position, facing the display branches.
The remote camera hidden in leaves, with my blind in the tree behind.
Blind under construction in the canopy.
In the blind with my laptop set up, ready to shoot.
The view from the blind with a 400 mm lens allowed me to also capture images such as this – two males displaying in unison!
If you have read this far, I hope you got a bit of a sense of how much work can go into creating one special image. To me, it's worth it.
Gallery Update:
33% Off Holiday Sale Ends Dec 8! The Bird-of-Paradise Sunrise and many other Tim Laman images are available in our gallery, and there is still time for printing and shipping before the Christmas. Just saying!
Thanks for reading, and best wishes to all.
Tim
Tim Laman’s Wildlife Diaries – Join me in supporting Orangutan Conservation
Dear Friends,
Today is Giving Tuesday, and I’d like to invite you to consider supporting the Gunung Palung Orangutan Conservation Program, a group that I support and work closely with. For all orangutan prints purchased from my store from now until the end of my Holiday Sale on December 8, I will donate 100% of proceeds to this NGO to support their work.
This includes my most famous orangutan image, “Entwined Lives” (below), winner of the 2016 Wildlife Photographer of the Year, and eight other favorite orangutan images in my Orangutan Gallery.
About the Gunung Palung Orangutan Conservation Program:
Gunung Palung National Park is one of the key strongholds of the Bornean Orangutan in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. GPOCP works closely with the communities around the park to:
- Obtain the legal title to their customary forest lands, preventing logging and conversion to farm land or oil palm plantations
- Switch to sustainable, organic agriculture practices that prevent further slash and burn destruction of the rainforest
- Develop alternative livelihoods that use sustainable non-timber forest products that create incentives to protect forests as well as provide income from sources that don't destroy orangutan habitat
- Teach young people about the value of protecting Indonesia's unique rainforests, endangered wildlife and educate the next generation of conservation leaders
- Study wild orangutans and learn about their nutritional requirements, reproductive viability and population health
To learn more about GPOCP, visit there website www.saveGPorangutans.org. And of course, please consider a donation beyond a print purchase as well if you are so inclined.
Gallery Update:
My 33% off Holiday Sale continues through Dec 8. As long as you order by then, we can assure delivery by Christmas.
Thanks for reading, and best wishes to all.
International Photo Festival at Montier en Der
Dear Friends,
I have just returned from a great experience in France, where I was a special guest of honor at the International Photo Festival at Montier en Der. It’s a unique festival with a hundred photographers exhibiting, and over 40,000 visitors over four days. I selected twenty of my best rain forest bird images for my exhibition at the festival, in keeping with their forest theme. I thought I’d share the story behind one of my new favorite images, that was also one of the crowd favorites. See below.
Feathers of the Forest: Rainforest Birds
Rhinoceros Hornbills have been one of my favorite rainforest birds ever since my very first trip to Borneo, and I was excited to capture this new image in Thailand during my recent hornbill assignment for National Geographic. To get a shot like this, the key thing is to be up in the canopy at the level where all the fruit is, so first we had to find a fruiting fig tree with a suitable nearby tree for climbing. Then climb the tree and construct a platform and turn it into a blind with camouflage cloth. Then come back before dawn and climb the tree by ascending the rope, pull up camera gear and set up. Then wait…. hoping the birds will come. In this case, with all these ripe figs, how could they resist? But you still need a lucky moment when the bird pops his head out from among the foliage to look around for the ripest fig. That’s when I captured this image.
Gallery Update:
My biggest sale of the year starts this Saturday the 23rd!
We are prepping a new set of Bird-of-Paradise square prints that make ideal gifts.
We have also added my “Feathers of the Forest” gallery of favorite forest bird images exhibited at Monteir en Der to the fine art site. Please have a sneak peak at www.timlamanfineart.com. Prints will be on sale starting the 23rd, so please come back then.
View Art Galleries
Thanks for reading, and best wishes to all.
Tim
Back to Gunung Palung
Dear Friends,
In October I was able to get back out to Gunung Palung in Borneo and check in on the baby orangutan born to Walimah in May. You may recall from an earlier newsletter that in July, the two-month old baby was still clinging to her mom 100% of the time. What a big change I saw in October! Now she is climbing around on branches and vines near her mom, and trying to sample fruits, imitating her mom’s feeding behavior, even though she can’t open the fruits yet. Here are a few images that show the five-month old baby, named Winnie by Pak Ari, the Director of Gunung Palung National Park that I shot in October.
Featured Photos:
Baby Winnie, five months old, reaching for fruits she’s not big enough to eat.
Filming for the BBC – Seven Worlds One Planet:
On the Orangutan theme, I’m excited to share that a major filming project that I worked on at Gunung Palung in 2017 and 2018 has now come to fruition! BBC newest Landmark series Seven Worlds One Planet’s Episode 2, Asia, includes a segment on the orangutans of Gungung Palung. The “Making of” section at the end of the film also features our work at Gunung Palung and the issue of orangutan conservation.
The film is already on the air in the UK, and will premier in the US on January 18, 2020.
To share just a little of what it is like do high quality filming of orangutans in Gunung Palung, it requires long days of carrying heavy gear through the forest for those occasional chances when we can get a good view of the orangutans. I carry my RED Helium 8K camera with a Canon 200-400mm and am closely followed by my assistant Bacong carrying a Gitzo series 5 tripod with a Sachtler video head. When we get a view, Bacong quickly puts up the tripod, I pop on the camera and try to get a shot off. We do this many, many times for each time we actually film something usable. But it’s worth the effort!
Photo by Russell Laman.
As always, you can learn more about my wife Cheryl Knott’s research and conservation work at Gunung Palung by checking out her website www.savegporangutans.org and following her teams’ work at @saveGPorangutans. Please consider supporting their hard work partnering with the National Park and surrounding communities to safeguard GP as an orangutan sanctuary for the long term.
Gallery Update
Holiday sale coming up: It’s that time of year, and I’m going to be offering a special holiday discount in my Fine Art Store www.timlamanfineart.com for the last week of November. It will be a perfect time for some early holiday shopping with plenty of time for printing and shipping, so think about anyone who might appreciate a Tim Laman print, ranging in price from $100 and up and keep your eye out for the sale announcement. Thanks for supporting my work!
Thanks for reading, and best wishes to all.
Tim
Raja Ampat
Dear Friends,
One of the highlights of recent months has been a chance to dive and photograph in the Raja Ampat Islands. If you are not familiar with Raja Ampat, they are the group of islands off the western tip of New Guinea, in the Indonesian province of West Papua. I have been diving there since 2006, and documenting the incredible biodiversity of the marine environment in the Raja Ampat is one of my long-term projects. It is a very special place, not only because it is the epicenter of marine biodiversity in the world, but also because it is a place where the rain forest meets the sea. The marine and terrestrial landscape are part of the ambitious “Conservation Province” initiative by the West Papuan government, and I am working to promote this cause through my visual storytelling.
Featured Photos:
The Raja Ampat Islands are mostly uplifted limestone. This means little runoff and siltation from land, and thus corals that can grow right up to the edge of the forest. This makes for really unique photographic opportunities.
The possibilities for exploring the marine life of Raja Ampat are truly unlimited. We have just started to scratch the surface, and there is so much research to be done. As the world’s epicenter of marine biodiversity, it is so important to document, study, and spread the word about protecting this amazing place. So please follow along as I continue to work in this region. And if some of you are inclined to join me at some point, please see the workshop announcement below.
Future Workshop – Underwater Photography:
Are you fascinated by the Raja Ampat region and also an experienced diver passionate about improving your underwater photography? I am planning an exclusive workshop in the region for a small group in July 2020 with colleague Zafer Kizilkaya. Drop an email to office@timlaman.com if you have any interest in learning more and we will keep you posted as details develop.
Gallery Update
My solo exhibition of photographic works from Walden Pond is now on display at the Walden Pond Visitor Center in Concord, Massachusetts, and will be up for the entire fall season. Please check it out if you are in the area. We have also added a lot more options to my online Fine Art print store, including the Walden Pond Collection, so please check it out.
Thanks for reading, and best wishes to all.
Tim
Back from Indonesia
Dear Friends,
I’m finally back home after an exciting two months of photography and filming in Indonesia. Its time to share a few highlights with you, and I’m going to start with some exciting news from Gunung Palung in Borneo, where I’ve been documenting my wife Cheryl Knott’s orangutan research for 25 years. Her project studies the entire population of wild orangutans in “GP” as we call it, but we get to know some individuals especially well, and none is more familiar to our team than a female named Walimah.
Featured Photos: Walimah - Then and Now
The first image was taken twenty years ago in 1999, when Walimah was a newborn infant. Walimah’s mother had a home range close to the research camp, and so we encountered her often and Walimah grew up seeing researchers on the ground below her as a normal part of her environment. So she has never been afraid of humans, and has been a great subject for my photography.
Some of you may be familiar, however, with the tragic turn of events in Walimah’s life in 2015. After the highlight of having her first baby in April that year, she was the apparent victim of an infanticidal attack by a rogue male orangutan (our best guess of what happened), and her first baby was lost. This story is documented in our 2016 film on NatGeo Wild Channel called “Mission Critical: Orangutan on the Edge” (and in a scientific paper by Cheryl and her team: Possible Male Infanticide in Wild Orangutans and a Re-evaluation of Infanticide Risk).
Well, Walimah is now having a second chance! She finally became pregnant again last year, and has a healthy new baby born this year in May! The images below are a couple of my favorites from my recent trip. Walimah’s new baby appears to be a female, and is now three months old and doing well. She is a great symbol of hope for the future of the orangutans of Gunung Palung, a conservation area that is turning out to be a stronghold for the critically endangered Bornean Orangutan. I’m already planning to keep going back to GP regularly over the next few years to document Walimah’s baby as she grows up.
You can learn more about Cheryl’s research and conservation work at Gunung Palung by checking out her website www.savegporangutans.org and following her teams’ work at @saveGPorangutans. Please consider supporting their hard work partnering with the National Park and surrounding communities to safeguard GP as an orangutan sanctuary for the long term.
Gallery Update:
I’m also launching an orangutan print gallery today at my art store TimLamanFineArt, so please check it out. I’ll be contributing profits from sale of these prints to saveGPorangutans.org, so please consider making a purchase to support orangutan conservation.
Here is a glimpse of some of the images in the new Orangutan gallery.
Thanks for reading and best wishes to all.
Tim
Thanks-A-Million Last Change
Dear Friends,
This is it - two days left to celebrate 1 million Instagram followers with me by scoring a great deal on my fine art prints!
Here's what you can save:
INDIVIDUAL PRINTS - 33% OFF
12x12" = $150 $100
15x15" = $225 $150
18x18" = $340 $226
PRINT COLLECTIONS - EXTRA 10%-20% OFF WITH CODE WALLART
Set of any 4, 15x15" = $900 $540
Set of any 4, 18x18" = $1,360 $814
Set of any 6, 15x15" = $1,350 $720
Set of any 6, 18x18" = $2,040 $1,085
Shop the Sale »
This is one of the best discounts I've ever offered (particularly the sets of 4 and 6), but I wanted to make this one special.
So thanks one more time to everyone who has enjoyed my work on Instagram, and I hope these prints make a perfect addition to your wallspace.1
All the best,
-Tim
P.S. - The sale ends July 3 at midnight. Any questions? Hit reply and let me know. And don't forget code WALLART to get an extra 10% off sets of 4 and an extra 20% off sets of 6!
Thanks-A-Milllion Update
Dear Friends,
In case you haven't heard, I've been running a massive print sale in honor of hitting 1 million followers on Instagram!
And today I'm making it even bigger with two announcements:
- New size! I've heard your emails asking for larger sizes, and have added a new 18x18" option to my store - available for the first time ever.
- Collector discount! Use code WALLART at checkout for an additional 10% off any 4 prints from my Instagram sale, or an additional 20% off any 6 prints. Applies only to 15x15" and 18x18" sizes.
So on top of 33% off each Instagram-favorite print, you can now score an additional 10-20% off for buying sets! To maximize your savings, I recommend a set of 6 which looks fantastic over a couch, bed, or table.
Shop the "Thanks a Million" Sale »
I hope this satisfies everyone who has been inquiring about larger sizes as well as a potential discount for ordering a full set of prints.
Thank you for all the support, and remember - the sale ends July 3!
All the best,
Tim
Thanks-A-Million Announcement!
Dear Friends,
In honor of hitting 1 million followers on Instagram, I'm running a massive print sale!
Here's the deal:
Through July 3, 2019, ten of the most-liked images from my Instagram feed are available as prints at special, discounted prices:
→12x12" for $100 (33% off)
→15x15" for $150 (33% off)
The prints look fantastic both alone and in multi-print arrangements. Each is digitally signed by me on the white border.
I'll link you to my super easy-to-use online store below where you can browse the collection and take advantage of the sale. I hope you'll find the perfect image or set of images for your wall space.
Shop the "Thanks a Million" Sale »
Thanks so much for all of your support and interest in my photographs and stay tuned from some surprises as the sale rolls along.
-Tim
P.S. - Here's a peek at 5 of the 10 available prints. To see the rest, check out the full gallery.
Thanks a Million Teaser
Thanks to your interest in my photos and stories, I recently hit 1,000,000 followers on Instagram!
It's been a busy few days here in Indonesia, but I've had a little bit of downtime to think about how to properly celebrate the occasion, and I think I came up with the perfect idea...
I'll fill you in tomorrow - stay tuned, and thanks so much to everyone who helped me reach this incredible milestone.
All the best, Tim
Newsletter #6
Dear Friends,
It’s been an eventful spring and I feel like I’ve barely had my feet on the ground. As I write this I’m on a plane headed back toward one of my favorite parts of the world – the mega-diversity country of Indonesia for two full months of filming and photography. I’ll be pursuing birds-of-paradise once again in Papua, working on underwater coverage in Raja Ampat, and then heading to Borneo to continue documenting orangutans at Gunung Palung, especially the female Walimah, who has just had a baby. So exciting times ahead, and I’ll share images and stories as I can here and on social media.
Back in May I had the opportunity to co-lead another wildlife safari to Tanzania with my good friend and former professor Eldon Greij, for the Hope College Alumni Global Travel Program. Every safari leads to amazing wildlife encounters, but I’d like to share a few images from a truly extraordinary day that we experienced.
Featured Image: Mortal Enemies - Lions and Buffalo
Witnessing lions making a kill was extraordinary, but at another point in the day, we saw that the lions do not always have it their way. We came upon a lion hunt that appeared to have gone awry. Lions were pursuing a herd of buffalo, but instead of isolating a buffalo to attack, a young male lion found himself surrounded by a herd of very angry buffalo who lashed out at him. For several minutes, we witnessed the incredible power of the buffalo, as they hooked the helpless lion with their horns and tossed him repeatedly into the air. It was very apparent why buffalo are considered one of the most dangerous animals in Africa. We thought the lion was going to be killed on the spot, but after about ten minutes of this, the buffalo abandoned him and he staggered to the bushes. It was hard to imagine he would live for long.
At times these scenes were not pleasant to watch, I will admit. Nature can be harsh. But it was real, and it was amazing to witness the cycle of life in a place that is still wild. We need places like that on earth, and it is good for us to visit them. As Tennyson wrote, on this day, we truly witnessed “Nature red in tooth and claw”.
We also witnessed a lot of beauty that day. I’ll leave you with a tender moment between a mother and baby zebra as we headed for the crater exit late in the afternoon. After all the death, it was refreshing to focus on new life as this unforgettable day came to a close.
Gallery Update:
Thanks to all of your interest in my photographs and stories, I have reached a milestone of 1 Million followers on Instagram. I’d like to show my appreciation by offering a selection of your favorite images from my Instagram feed as discounted prints. Soon you can own one or more of the images you enjoyed on Instagram to hang on your wall. The updates to the website will be completed soon.
Thanks for reading and all the best, Tim
Inaugural Birds-of-Paradise Flash Sale
Dear Friends,
To celebrate Earth Day and the addition of my Birds-of-Paradise to our print store, we are offering a special selection of square 12 x 12 inch prints for only $100 each.
Each print will be hand-signed by Tim Laman in the one-inch white border. Normally priced at $150, this special $100 sale lasts for just four days, from April 19-22.
Square Prints on Sale for $100!
As with all my prints, you have the option to have the print mounted to Gatorboard with mount blocks and ready to hang. No framing needed.
I have selected a variety of my favorite Birds-of-Paradise for this initial set of six collectable prints. Red, Blue, Wilson’s, and Western Parotia options will look great in any combination. So think about purchasing a set of two, three, or four, and making a nice arrangement on your wall.
See my Instagram feed and stories @TimLaman for shots of the samples we ordered. I think they look great!
Red Bird-of-Paradise Heart Display
A male Red Bird-of-Paradise performs an inverted display at the top of the rain forest canopy, his extraordinary tail wires forming a heart-shaped arc around his outstretched wings. Top choice for the romantic bird lover.
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Western Parotia Bird-of-Paradise Ballerina Dance
A male Western Parotia flares his special chest feathers into a "tutu" and shakes his head wires in the courtship display commonly known as the "ballerina dance". This extraordinary bird is always a conversation starter.
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Blue Bird-of-Paradise in Fruiting Tree
A male Blue Bird-of-Paradise perches on the slender branch of his favorite fruit tree. This photograph will bring color and beauty to any room.
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Wilson's Bird-of-Paradise Head-down Display
A male Wilson's Bird-of-Paradise attempts to lure a female to his display court by presenting his bright red back towards her. One of Tim's classic Birds-of-Paradise shots, this image will match with any other BOP picture in this group.
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Blue Bird-of-Paradise Inverted Display
A male Blue Bird-of-Paradise hangs upside down and flares out his plumes as he performs a practice display. One of the most extraordinary bird displays ever.
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Red Bird-of-Paradise Sunrise Display
A male Red Bird-of-Paradise spreads his wings in display at the top of the rain forest canopy and catches the first rays of the morning sun. Even if you're not an early bird, you can always admire this one!
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Thanks for reading and all the best,
Tim