Tim Laman

Tim Laman is a field biologist, wildlife photojournalist, and filmmaker. Since getting his Ph.D. from Harvard for pioneering research in Borneo’s rainforest canopy, his cameras have been his tools for telling the stories of rare and endangered wildlife, and revealing some of earth’s wildest places.

He has photographed on all seven continents, and regularly travels to some of the most remote corners of the earth to explore and document poorly known species. Working in extreme environments from the rain forest canopy in Borneo to the coral reefs of Papua, and from mountain peaks in New Guinea to the seas of Antarctica, Laman spends many months a year on expeditions to study and photograph the biodiversity of earth’s richest realms. He is most well known for his long-term work on birds-of-paradise and orangutans.

He has published 23 feature stories in National Geographic magazine, as well as worked on films for National Geographic Channel, BBC, and Netflix. His filming credits include the BBC’s “Planet Earth II” and “Seven Worlds – One Planet”, as well as Netflix’ “Our Planet – Jungles” which was nominated for an Emmy for Best Cinematography in 2019.

Laman’s work has garnered numerous awards, including the overall prize Wildlife Photographer of the Year in 2016, twenty other winning images in that competition over the years, a 1st place Nature Story from World Press Photo, and the North American Nature Photography Association’s “Nature Photographer of the Year”.

Laman is a fellow of the Explorer’s Club and of the International League of Conservation Photographers, and is a Associate of the Ornithology Department at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, as well as the co-founder of the Birds-of-Paradise Project at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.