Check out all of Laman’s Bird of Paradise photographs over on his website. Or, get the hardcover photobook that can be purchased over on Amazon.
Carolyn Y. Johnson of the Boston Globe writes,
Laman [...] has an unusual career in which the skills he mastered as a Boy Scout—camping, backpacking, archery—are essential. In 2003, he teamed up with Edwin Scholes, an ornithologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, in a partnership that would take them on 18 trips to New Guinea. Through rain, floods, and interminable waiting for birds to show up at the right time, on the right branch, in the right light, they sought birds of paradise at 51 field sites. The life of a scientist-explorer isn’t exactly easy: it involved traversing flooded forests, rough boat rides, and being dropped off by helicopter in remote jungle. Laman climbed 165 feet up into trees and set up bird blinds and leafcams, staking out some of the most exotic animals on Earth.