David Ondaatje was born and grew up in Canada. After graduating from Harvard College and then Cambridge University, he moved to California in 1987 where he has simultaneously pursued careers in business and the arts. For the past twenty-five years, he has been Chairman of the RL Winston Rod Company and has also been active as a filmmaker, writer, and photographer. His films have premiered at film festivals around the world including the Venice Biennale and his fly-fishing photography has been featured in print for many years. He was an early remote aerial photographer, enamored with the idea of capturing the beauty of familiar places differently than had been done previously using fixed-wing aircraft from higher elevations.
Taken over several years in a variety of countries, the new aerial photographs featured in Water Views reveal David Ondaatje's inexhaustible passion and unique eye for taking photographs from the air. Ondaatje's 2019 exhibition "First Look" at ROSEGALLERY in Los Angeles debuted large-scale mounted prints of select aerial images also included in this book.