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.

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Backyard Birds Revealed Launched

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A belated Happy New Year to you all!  I’m excited to announce that the new short-form video series I created with my son Russell for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is now live! 

We decided to get creative with our wildlife cinematography tools like a super-slow-motion camera, super telephoto lenses and a unique probe lens to reveal aspects of the lives of our common backyard birds in ways you likely haven’t seen before.  The Cornell Lab liked the idea, so whenever we weren’t on other assignments last winter, Russell and I spent our time filming right in our own backyard in Massachusetts. 

We both learned so many new things about our common birds by just spending many hours watching them and trying to film their behavior.  It was a reminder that you don’t have to travel to the other side of the world to experience the wonder of nature.  Just step outside and practice being a good observer! 

The first episode officially dropped on Sunday Jan 11 on the Cornell Lab Youtube Channel, and you can watch it here: 

Tufted Titmice at Sunrise

With my Backyard Birds Revealed project, getting creative with filming and photographing birds right in my yard (and even right at my bird feeder like in this shot) was a fun challenge.  On this day I lined up my bird feeder directly in front of the rising sun and captured this artsy silhouette of squabbling titmice.  One of the things that makes wildlife photography endlessly fascinating is that it is an art form where you combine your creative ideas with an element of chance or luck.  You don’t control your subjects or their movements, and can’t anticipate their behavior or wing positions precisely, so you never know exactly what you might get.  The combination of your ideas on how to create the image plus the serendipity of the natural world creates the art.  This shot is a perfect example of that. 

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Wild Birds Revealed – Atlantic Puffins

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Did you know that Atlantic Puffins fly underwater? They aren’t the most elegant or acrobatic of fliers in the air. They seem to have trouble getting airborne on their small stiff wings, and pretty much fly in straight lines. But underwater, those same wings give them the power and maneuverability they need to chase and catch fish.


My son Russell and I went to Maine this past July to try to film puffins both above and below water, and had a fun time doing it. We hired a lobster boat, and went out to Petit Manan Island, one of their nesting sites. As puffins came and went from the island, and rafted up to rest in the water around the island between hunting for fish to feed their chicks, we took our chances to capture our footage. Russell even went in the water and snorkeled with the puffins to get some underwater shots. You can watch the video we made as part of our series Wild Birds Revealed for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology on their YouTube channel. In this video series, we not only reveal interesting aspects of bird behavior, but we also reveal how we got the shots. In this case it included Russell donning a puffin decoy on his head to help him approach the puffins. Check out the video HERE to see how he did! I hope you enjoy it.


I’ve selected a few of my favorite stills from the project for you below. It was fantastic to spend some time with these charismatic little seabirds who were once down to a few individuals on the Maine islands, but now number in the thousands due to successful conservation efforts! If you ever have a chance to go watch them yourself, I encourage you to do it!

The Puffin Run

In order to help them get enough speed up to get airborne, Atlantic Puffins have to get a running start. They start flapping their wings against the water, and run along the surface with the orange webbed feet flailing until they finally get up into the air. I knew that the flying spray and footprints left in the water would make for a fun action shot, so I kept watching for a puffin that was about to take off perpendicular to our bouncing lobster boat. It was a beautiful sunny morning with the water taking on the blue of the sky when I got my chance and captured this shot.

Atlantic Puffin Gallery

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Wild Birds Revealed – The Slow Motion Beauty and Skill of an Osprey’s Dive

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Dear Friends,
Greetings! First off, don’t miss signing up for my Live Event on Sep 25 at 1 PM Eastern Time with the Cornell Lab! Russ Laman and I will be sharing the stories behind our new video series Wild Birds Revealed. (And just for signing up, you’ll be entered to win a free pair of binoculars. Plus you will get a link to watch the recording of the event later even if you can’t attend live!)

Back in late May, my son Russ and I went up to coastal Maine at the height of the alewife run, when these fish travel upstream from the ocean to spawn in freshwater lakes. Osprey and other predators gather at choke points like river mouths or rapids to take advantage of this bounty, and we used this opportunity to capture footage of the action. Our goal was to use both still photographs and a super slow motion camera called the Chronos 4K that shot 1000 frames per second, to reveal the details of the ospreys hunt. If you haven’t seen it, I think you’ll enjoy the video HERE.

The Osprey Dive

One of my goals with this osprey photography project was to freeze the moment just before the osprey hit the water with a still image. The slow motion video featured in the short film does an amazing job of revealing detail, but a still image still adds something. By freezing a moment in time, it allows you to really soak up the details, like the way the osprey reaches its long legs out in front of its eyes, and folds its wings back just before impact with the water. It took many long hours of waiting and watching ospreys flying around and trying to be ready when they started their dive. Then the hardest part was tracking them with the lens as they dove, and keeping them in focus, because it was not easy to guess which way they would dive, and they often veered one direction or another at the last second. So when I captured this in-focus image just before the osprey hit the water, I was very happy!

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Underwater Photography Workshop in Raja Ampat

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Dear Friends,
This is a special announcement for the underwater photography enthusiasts out there! As those of you who have followed my work for a while probably know, although I do a lot bird and primate photography, I am also passionate about exploring the underwater world with my cameras, especially to document the diversity of life on coral reefs.


My underwater stories for National Geographic have included “Fiji’s Rainbow Reefs”, and “One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish – Why are Coral Reefs So Colorful” (yes NatGeo cleared the title with Dr. Seus), as well as other projects mixing topside and underwater coverage, like “Mangroves” and “Biodiversity Hotspots – Philippines”.


My favorite place to dive, ever since I spent considerable time there working on two stories for German GEO magazine in 2007, has been the Raja Ampat Islands of West Papua, Indonesia. This region has the highest coral and fish species diversity on the planet, and reefs that are in excellent health. It also doesn’t hurt that these islands harbor birds-of-paradise (which can be seen on morning excursions from the dive resort).


I am thus excited to announce that later this year, I will be leading two Underwater Photography workshops with my good friend and colleague Zafer Kizillkaya. You can read more about the workshop and learn how to sign up at this LINK. There are two sets of dates: 20-29 August on the live aboard Coralia, and 31 Aug – 10 Sep at the resort. If you are interested, please sign up soon. Space is limited, and spots have begun to fill already.


Meanwhile, below are a few images I shot during last years photo workshop.
Raja Ampat is one of the top diving destinations in the world, so if you are interested in improving your underwater photography, why not join us in Raja Ampat, a true paradise for underwater photography?
If you have any questions, feel free to email me at studio@timlaman.com as well.

The Colors of Raja Ampat

The reefs of Raja Ampat are bathed in rich currents, and under the protection of an overhang like this, soft corals often flourish, creating incredibly lush and colorful scenes. I found this spot on one of our last dives last year. I liked the windows to the blue water behind that added depth to the image, so I settled down and patiently waited for a fish to pass by. Eventually, as my air was getting a bit low, several surgeonfish swam past, and I managed to capture one perfectly framed in the opening. It’s this kind of small detail that can elevate an image above the ordinary that I am always striving for in my photography.

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Back in Borneo to Start the New Year

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Happy New Year and greetings from Indonesia! I am excited to be writing to you from the town of Ketapang on the island of Borneo, our jumping off point as we prepare to head into Gunung Palung National Park.


We just celebrated the new year with the whole team from the Gunung Palung Orangutan Conservation Program, known as Yayasan Palung here in Indonesia, and are preparing to head up to the research station in the park where I have spent so much time over the years.

This is Year 30 of my wife Cheryl Knott’s orangutan project and so our focus on this trip is two-fold. First, we want to capture this historic achievement of this long-term project by filming the various team members sharing their stories. Our timing is also exciting in that there is a major mast fruiting event going on it the forest. This phenomenon only happens about once every five years, when trees of all different species fruit in synchrony. So our second objective is to film orangutans and other wildlife feasting on this bounty.


It’s exciting to be starting off the new year with this important project and to have a chance to spend time with family, friends, and colleagues old and new in the rainforest of Gunung Palung. You are welcome to join us virtually by visiting www.savewildorangutans.org. (There is more info below).

I look forward to sharing new content from this trip with you all in a future update, but in the meantime, here are a few favorite images from my Gunung Palung archives.

Rhinoceros Hornbills in the canopy. One of my favorite shots of all time when everything came together after a pre-dawn tree climb near a fruiting fig. Three hornbills in the foreground, perfect mist in the canopy in the background….
Male orangutan with leaf umbrella. During a rare orangutan follow where this male tolerated me nearby as he fed on termites on the ground, I was in position to catch him pull this leafy branch over his head as is started to rain.
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Amazon Update

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I just got home from a National Geographic Photo Expedition on the Upper Amazon where I was serving as a “photography expert”, teaching and helping others with their wildlife photography. From our home base on the beautiful boat, the Delfin II, we ventured out in skiffs to explore tributaries and oxbow lakes teaming with birds, monkeys and sloths in Peru’s Pacaya Samiria National Reserve. This reserve is located just beyond the end of the Amazon proper, where it splits into two big tributaries, the Ucayali and the Marañon.


Below are a few images I captured during the trip to give you a little overview of the amazing diversity of life that we encountered during our relatively brief seven day trip. Hope you enjoy it.

Cormorant Liftoff

On this Amazon tour, we spent most of our time looking for wildlife from the skiffs, and there were ample chances to photograph waterbirds along the river courses. On the Pacaya River, there were hundreds of cormorants, but if they did take off, most flew directly away from us, not making for great images. I kept my eye out for one that was taking off perpendicular to us, and tried to track it as it launched. These Neotropical Cormorants need a bit of a run and hop along the water’s surface to get airborne, so I framed the shot including the big splash behind the bird that he created with big push of his tail. A high shutter speed of 1/4000 sec froze every drop of water in mid-air. I love “freezing a unique moment in time” with a still photograph, so this was one of my favorite shots from the trip. Although many cormorant takeoff photos will be made, this exact photograph will never be repeated.

Glimpses of Life in the Amazon

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Report from the World’s Richest Reefs

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Dear Friends,
Greetings from New England where it’s that beautiful time of year when the the forest bursts into fall colors. I’m overdue to share with you some new images from another very colorful part of the world – the Reefs of Raja Ampat.

Back in August I had the pleasure of co-leading an underwater photo workshop at the Papua Explorer’s resort in the Raja Ampat Islands with my good friend Zafer Kizilkaya, a leading underwater photographer from Turkey. I’m happy to report that the reefs of Raja Ampat continue to be vibrant, lack significant bleaching, and are teaming with fish. The diving industry there is thriving, and local communities are benefiting, which is great to see. Many villages are protecting reefs and creating no fishing zones, and profiting from fees paid by visiting divers.

If you are interested in joining us, we will be having our next workshops at Papua Explorers in August and September 2025, including a workshop on the live-aboard “Coralia”. To learn more send me an email at studio@timlaman.com, or send a query via the Papua Explorer’s website (papuaexplorers.com).

A Kaleidoscope of Life

Toward the end of one of our last dives of the trip at an amazing dive site called “Blue Magic”, I ducked under an overhang to get out of the current, and was confronted with this incredibly colorful scene. I loved the vibrant colors of the soft corals, crinoids, tunicates, and other creatures. The multiple windows to the blue beyond added great depth and interest to the potential photograph. I just needed a fish in just the right spot to create a silhouette in one of the windows to add that extra little something to the image. So I settled down and waited, taking test shots to get my lighting just right (the foreground is lit by two flashes). Before my air supply ran too low, a surgeonfish passed in just the right spot, rewarding me for my patience with this image.

Riches of the Raja Ampat Reefs

Zafer Kizilkaya swims over a healthy reef of Acropora hard coral. It’s awesome to see the abundance of healthy coral in Raja Ampat.

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