Tim Laman / Wildlife Photographer of the Year

I’m thrilled for Tim Laman, who has just won the 2016 Wildlife Photographer of the Year award for this stunning shot of an orangutan climbing the pillar root of a strangler fig (Ficus stupenda) to feast on ripe figs.

There is a sweet irony to Laman’s winning photo. It was thanks to an image of an orangutan that Laman ever visited Indonesia, where he first became a fig biologist and later developed the skills that would enable him to take photos of life in the rainforest canopy.

Back in 1986, Laman had been at Harvard University studying for a PhD when he saw a poster advertising a research assistant’s job in Indonesian Borneo. The poster featured an image (below) from The Malay Archipelago by Alfred Russel Wallace, Laman’s future hero.

Laman got the job, put his studies on hold and travelled to Borneo, where he fell in love with the rainforest. His life tilted in a new direction. For the next few years, he studied  strangler figs — important plants whose figs feed orangutans and dozens of other wildlife species.

To understand these fascinating plants he had to climb the giant trees on which the stranglers grow. It was up there in the rainforest canopy that Tim found his true vocation — capturing phenomenal images of rare and endangered wildlife. Congratulations Tim!

Notes:

I’m doubly grateful to Tim Laman. First, for his meticulous research on strangler figs, which helped me during my own doctoral research on these plants. Second, for the help he provided when I was researching my book about fig trees Ladders to Heaven / Gods, Wasps and Stranglers. Laman is the star of Chapter 7.

To see more of Laman’s photos, visit his Facebook and Instagram pages, or his website.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year is developed and produced by the  Natural History Museum, London. For more details of the awards, visit the website.

Full caption for Laman’s winning photo: