By: Cayte Burdick
Posted In: Profile
Photo credit: Cayte Burdick
One hundred feet above the ocean, Onne van der Wal is standing on a metal beam spreader, which is thinner than the length of his feet. Looking down with his Canon EOS camera in hand, he looks to the dark blue water below. Merely feet in front of the sloop boat, Shaman, are a group of icebergs.
The average person would probably be scared for their life in this moment: the daunting height, the approaching iceberg. But not Onne – it’s all in a day’s work for him as a world-renowned nautical photographer. This particular trip was off of Spitsbergen, part of the Norwegian Artic. Onne (pronounced “Onn-Uh”) loves to take photographs, and has been making a living with it for over 20 years. “I think if you look at someone like an accountant or a postman, what do they have at the end of the day? This is what I have at the end of the day: all pictures hanging on the wall. I create something. It’s incredibly rewarding,” said Onne. Besides photographing, Onne loves doing pretty much anything outdoors: kayaking, fishing with his sons, hiking, and camping. He also loves swimming long distance; he participates in Save the Bay, a two-mile swim which he trains year-long for. “If I can’t swim, it’s not a holiday for me.” said Onne. Onne spends his summers in Newport. If he’s not photographing, he goes to his studio around 8:30 a.m. after dropping his kids off at school (if they have school). At his studio office, he spends most of his time on the computer, editing his photographs for technicalities like lighting and exposure. He won’t have to fix too much, though, because he knows how to get a good photograph. And he won’t add anything into the photograph that wasn’t there; he’s all about honesty and truly stunning shots. Other business in the office includes doing estimates for assignments, talking to clients about jobs, and talking to his two co-workers – Kristin Browne, who helps out in his studio, and wife Tenley van der Wal, who runs the gallery downstairs – about stock photography and other matters, as well as signing photographs in the gallery. Around 4 p.m. when the light is nice, he may go out to do an assignment, either in his boat, Onnesignment, or in a helicopter. The rest of the year, Onne usually takes a few trips, either for business or for a relaxing break, but most of the time can be found in his studio, hard at work. While getting to travel around the world to take photographs may seem like a dream job, it does have its drawbacks. “I hate the fact that I’ve got to haul so much shit with me – equipment, you know, all that stuff. And I end up fighting continuously with people at the airport: ‘you’ve got too much, you can’t take this.’ So that’s a pain in the butt,” he said. Onne also has a hard time being away from his family. “Sitting in a hotel on your own, eating alone in a hotel, people look at you like nobody likes you,” said Onne. However, the job does have its perks as well. He just got back from South Africa for three weeks where he “did nothing but surfing and swimming, hanging out with the kids and my parents, kayaking, and just exploring.” Onne added, “I can travel.we’ve been given a lot of free stuff: airline tickets and boats and hotel rooms.” These days, Onne only uses Canon cameras to photograph. He used to use Olympus, and was also sponsored by them. However once Canon came out with the auto focus feature, he made the switch. They also have better lenses, he says. For 15 years he bought his own Canon cameras, but once his name because synonymous with sailing photography, he got a sponsorship from his favorite camera company. Onne says they only sponsor 40 photographers in the country. With Canon’s sponsorship, Onne gets free camera gear and does some lectures. Onne was born in Holland. When he was three years old, his family immigrated to South Africa on a ship. “A cousin of my dad’s was living in Cape Town, and he said we should come down. We were going to come to the States, but he said ‘No, come to South Africa – the weather’s nice, there’s a lot of work.’ There was a huge immigration boom,” Onne explains. Onne began learning how to sail when he was six years old with his dad on a dinghy. He did all his schooling in South Africa, including vocational school, which was the equivalent of college. His trade was machinery, and he graduated a year early; something only 10 percent of his class did. “That helped me a lot with my sailing because I was able to fix and repair and build stuff,” Onne said. In 1979, at age 23, Onne left South Africa to be a professional sailor and racer. His family had always been one with the sea – one of his grandfathers was a lighthouse keeper off the coast of Holland. This same year, he was part of a winning team in a trans-Atlantic race. However his first major victory was with the Dutch boat Flyer, which won the 1981-82 Whitbred Round the World Race (now called the Volvo Ocean Race). It took Flyer 122 days to circle the Earth – that’s about seven months. They would sail for about a month at a time, and then take a few weeks off in Cape Town, New Zealand, and Argentina. Onne’s profession in photography began when he was on Flyer. He took photographs just for memory’s sake. But one day, they were in a harbor in Massachusetts on a practice run, when the publishers from Sail magazine came to look at their boat. “I was the only one on board at the time, so I showed them around,” Onne says. He asked them to look at his photography after he gave the tour, and they asked to bring his photos to the art department at Sail. “The art department called me the next day and said, ‘we’d like you to sign a contract that you’ll shoot for us during the Round the World Race.'” When Onne was about 27, he retired from racing. “There comes a time when you get tired of living out of a sea bag, and living with 15 or 20 pigs in a boat all the time,” he said. Although he loved racing, he was ready to settle down. Onne decided to make his home in Newport in 1987. “I like the whole feeling of this little town. It’s just very old, very nautically oriented,” he says. “There were a lot of guys like myself who decided to hang up their sea boots and come ashore. I bumped in to a lot of guys who I used to race with years ago and they all lived here.”1997 is the year Onne met his wife, Tenley. She went to see a slideshow Onne was showing of his photographs. She loved the show, and wanted to talk to him afterwards, but didn’t get much of a chance. She also appreciated the photos Onne had of his nephews, and could tell he loved children. Tenley’s first husband had died earlier, leaving her a single mother with two young children. Later on, Onne and Tenley were both invited to an Easter party by mutual friends. They found out later that it was a set up. They hit it off, and in October of 1998, they were married. The couple had a private wedding ceremony on Prudence Island, where they owned some land. They got there by boat, and because the tide was so high, Onne carried Tenley to shore.and the minister. Tenley joked that during the ceremony, Onne was more focused on the ocean, and wishing he were fishing instead. Almost ten years later, the couple is still going strong, both romantically and as business partners. Tenley runs Onne’s gallery, and goes through all of the photographs in the winter. Onne adopted Tenley’s two children, Read and Billy. The couple also had a child of their own, named Adrian. In 2001, the Onne van der Wal Gallery opened in Newport. A family friend, Stephen Fasano, ran the gallery for the first few months. Fasano said the night of the gallery opening was a big moment for Onne. He was in the midst of people who appreciated him; it was the realization of having his own gallery. All of Onne’s time, effort, and work had paid off. “Nobody deserved it more than he did,” Fasano said. Since then, Onne has been doing well with his photography. However, even with his great success as a sailing photographer, there is more he would like to achieve. One goal is something any photographer would love – for their photographs to appear in National Geographic. Onne almost had this chance once when he got a call from the magazine after they reviewed his portfolio. “They started off with four or five photographers, and it was down to two of us, and a very good friend of mine who lives in England got the job, and I didn’t,” he explained. He hopes one day he will get a call again, but says he will still feel successful if it doesn’t happen. As for future plans, Onne and Tenley hope to go to warmer climates during the winter months, once their kids are off to college in five years or so. Onne also would like to shoot more photographs that he wants, and less for jobs. He is also hoping to be able to live off of stock photography. These can be found on websites, where photographers can submit their photos, and when people wish to use them, the photographer gets a percent of the fee it costs to purchase the photo for usage. Onne says he would like to be remembered as “the guy that shoots those beautiful sailboat pictures.” He says some people do recognize him as that now, but mostly in the sailing circles. If more people in the general public knew about him, his business would be even more profitable. “It’s not so much an ego thing, it’s more of a successful business thing,” Onne explains. Former co-worker Fasano believes that Onne will “continue to evolve as one of the world’s best photographers.” That may sound like a big achievement, but for Onne, it is possible. In fact, Fasano believes there is no better nautical photographer than Onne today. Onne’s photographs are so impressive because he knows how to do his job. Fasano says that what may take an average photographer ten minutes to prepare for and take a shot, “Onne does in his sleep.”
