Tim Laman is a wildlife photographer and field biologist. His special interest is in documenting, and promoting the conservation of, rare and endangered species and the remaining wild places of the planet. He is equally at home working high in the canopy of a rain forest tree or diving on a tropical coral reef.
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He has been a regular contributor to National Geographic magazine since 1997 and is a research associate in the Ornithology Department at Harvard University.
Laman was born in 1961 in Japan and developed his interest in nature and photography in Japan's mountains and oceans during his childhood. He pursued studies in biology and is self-taught in photography. He first went to the rain forests of Borneo in 1987, and since then the Asia-Pacific region, and especially the Indonesian archipelago, have been a special focus of both his scientific research and photography.
Laman received his Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University in 1994 for his rain forest canopy research on strangler fig trees, which also became the subject of his first National Geographic article in April 1997. His scientific research has been supported by several grants from the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration, and in 1997 he received the Chairman's Award from the committee. He has published more than a dozen scientific articles related to rain forest ecology and bird life.
An article in National Geographic on birds of paradise (July 2007) is part of an ongoing interest in documenting this uniquely spectacular group of birds. With collaborator Edwin Scholes, Laman has received support from the National Geographic Expeditions Council to continue work on documenting little-known species of birds of paradise in the wild. He is also making regular expeditions to the wilds of New Guinea and Indonesia for this project.
Laman also continues to collaborate with his wife, Cheryl Knott, a professor at Harvard, on orangutan research and conservation projects in Borneo.
Laman's photographs have received recognition in the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards (1998, 2001, 2002, 2005), Pictures of the Year (1998), Nature's Best International Photographic Awards (2001, 2003, 2006), and Communication Arts (2003). His images have also appeared in National Geographic's "100 Best Photos" and "100 Best Wildlife Photos" special publications.
www.timlaman.com
