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.
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.
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.
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.
They inhabit rugged and remote regions where they pose an extreme challenge to locate and photograph in their dense rainforest homes in New Guinea.
Laman and Scholes spent over 18 months doing fieldwork in the New Guinea region over an eight-year period with support from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Conservation International and the National Geographic Expeditions Council.
Laman's tree-climbing exploits and doctoral research feature in Chapter 7 of Mike Shanahan's 2016 book Ladders to Heaven: How fig trees shaped our history, fed our imaginations and can enrich our future, republished in North America as Gods, Wasps and Stranglers (US).