Tim Laman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Timothy G. Laman is an American ornithologist, wildlife photojournalist and filmmaker. He is notable for documenting all the species of bird-of-paradise in their native habitat during research expeditions with colleague Edwin Scholes of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.[1] His bird-of-paradise work was first published in a 2007 article about them for National Geographic. In 2016, he won the top prize in the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards, for his image of an orangutan climbing a tree to feed on figs.[2]
Laman was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1961 to American parents originally from Michigan who spent their careers working as protestant missionaries in Japan. He spent most of his childhood in Japan before attending college in the United States. His early education included Japanese public school, home schooling by his mother, American schools on military bases in Japan, and finally graduating from Canadian Academy, an international school in Kobe, Japan. Laman received his a B.S in biology from Hope College in Holland, Michigan in 1983. Laman graduated with a Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University in 1994.[3]
Career
Laman first traveled to the rainforests of Borneo in 1987. Since that trip, the Asia-Pacific region has been a major focus for his photography and research. He initially pursued a doctoral program in neuroscience and animal behavior at Harvard University. Later he decided to take a year off from his studies and joined biologist and ecologist Mark Leighton as a field assistant.[4]
Upon his return to Cambridge, he transferred to the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and completed his doctorate in 1994. His pioneering research in Borneo’s rainforest canopy for his doctoral thesis was featured in his first National Geographic article in 1997, which he both wrote and photographed. He continued documenting little-known and endangered wildlife as a regular contributor to National Geographic, publishing 23 feature stories to date. In addition, Laman has published more than a dozen scientific articles on rainforest ecology and birdlife as a research associate in Harvard University's Ornithology Department in the Museum of Comparative Zoology.
Photography
Laman published his first article in National Geographic magazine in 1997, and has been a regular contributor to the magazine ever since. He has published 23 feature stories as photographer, and authored four of those as well. Laman's photography has focused on capturing images and videos of subjects that were difficult to document, such as the Sunda flying lemur and other gliding animals in Borneo, displaying birds-of-paradise and critically endangered bird species including the Nuku Hiva pigeon and the Visayan wrinkled hornbill of the Philippines. He focused on documenting endangered and at-risk animals in order to promote awareness and encourage conservation efforts.
Building on his career in still photography, Laman began filming for natural history documentary films around 2009, and has been a cinematographer for numerous films, including the BBC's "Planet Earth II", Netflix's "Our Planet - Jungles", Netflix's "Dancing with the Birds", BBC's "Seven Worlds - One Planet", Netflix's "David Attenborough: A Life on Planet Earth", and BBC's "Life in Color with David Attenborough".
Awards
Laman has received many accolades and awards, including the “Outstanding Nature Photographer” award in 2009 from the North American Nature Photography Association, their highest honor.[5] Twenty-two of his images have won recognition in the Natural History Museum's Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards. In 2016, he was named their Wildlife Photographer of the Year.[6] He won several prizes in Nature’s Best International Photography awards, including first place in the Underwater category.[citation needed]
