[1] He competed with Peter Bakker in double scull and won bronze at the 1959 European Rowing Championships in Mâcon, France.

[3] In early 1961, Rentmeester moved to the United States and studied photography at the Art Center College in Los Angeles.

After receiving his Bachelor of Arts, Rentmeester initially started his career as a freelance photographer in 1965 for Life Magazine.

He first covered the Watts Riots in Los Angeles, documenting many of the dramatic events, which earned him his first accolades as a photographer.

His pictures from a trip through Indonesia were shown in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, and Asia House in New York.