Background Information
On this site I want to share some information with you how it came to this homepage, why the title is like it is and some more background.
What is "ToodelooKangaroo"?
After return from traveling a lot of people asked for pictures I took during that time and about experiences I made. Nowadays, it is unfortunately like this, that the digital age gets more and more advanced and the modern human being (I include myself in here) uses digital photography. The pictures taken will then rest on harddrives and probably get viewed one day, but this is really not often the case. This brought me to the fact that I printed picturebooks which I show to family, friends and colleagues who are interested. After my journey through and around the red continent of Australia, I got an overwhelming positive feedback for these books and I realized that I can share these pictures and memories with some of my friends, but not all. Working abroad, traveling to new places away from home, where you meet great people, widens this circle of friends. In the meantime I can say that this starts in Australia and goes via all the continents down to Latin America. For all those people it is rather hard to share printed pictures, so I asked myself, how I can make these pictures and the memories accessable to them?
I started to think what I could do, to give as many people as possible access to my pictures in order to view them. Should it be like a sort of online-drive where I could then store the pictures and distribute the link, or like an online-picturebook or just a simple email where I attach the pictures to? So I started to do some research on this topic, talked to some friends who love photography as well looked in the world of the world wide web. All I found on the web did not satisfy me at all, and so I came to the conclusion that the best is to launch my own webspace where I can share pictures and memories. All the pictures on this homepage are taken by me over the course of the past years during my journeys. The intention is to give you on the one hand impressions of other countries and continents and on the other hand to make us human beings aware of how great and beautiful our Planet Earth actually is. That it is worth to protect and to safe it for our children as we just rent the earth from them and that they can view the same great things like we did and hopefully still will do.
Why "ToodelooKangaroo"?
I have thought for a long time about how to call my homepage and found it a bit boring using my own name for it. Recently I read a book series about a guy living in Berlin together with a kangaroo and was pretty taken by the books. While I was traveling through the red continent I have seen the diversity and beauty of kangaroos, wallabies and wallaroos.
We made a fantastic experience when we were in Australia, while hiking some sections of the "Great Ocean Walk". We heard some sound in the bush next to the trail and while hiking spotted something. So we decided to stop next to something I would call an animal trail, crossing the hiking trail, and waited and watched what may come out there. After a couple of minutes we saw a small head and two ears which did without doubt belong to a roo or something of this species. Some minutes later a small wallaroo (a combination of wallaby and kangaroo) hopped out, stopped in the middle of the hiking trail, looking at us with sleepy eyes for some seconds before disappearing again on the other side of the trail. At first we could not believe that this just really happened and shortly after we just started laughing.
P.S.: By the way, the kangaroo does reflect two, in my opinion very important, things. In the aboriginal world the kangaroo stands for the happiness on a personality level and it reflects the bush as a location.
Is it possible to purchase pictures from "ToodelooKangaroo"?
Again, a point I was not really sure at the beginning what I should answer to this. I of course appreciate when people enjoy and like my pictures, the sceneries, colours and situations. Also, when I can inspire people with those pictures and make them think about our planet and its beauty, it feels great, but I do not want to run a business with it and all the administration behind it.
Hence I decided to do the following. If someone is interested in a picture he or she can contact me by mail and let me know which picture they like. I do not share a pricelist, due to the fact that I want to do it according to a fair-price-concept. This means that I will let you know then the costs for print, packing and shipment, which are the minimum costs for the picture and can be easily browsed on the web. The amount you transfer to my account is then what you think is the real value of the picture for you, including my expenses which I mentioned above. At the end you will get a picture which is individually made for you, based on your preferences (like size, paper, shiny, etc.). Personally I prefer prints from a picture lab which means a bit a higher price but much better quality as the colours really match with what you see on the screen (this works for my IPS display). But when the time comes we can discuss about that and I can give as well some recommendations depending on the foreseen use.
The money I will make out of this, if any, will be given to organizations which take care of our Planet Earth, by means of protecting the world as it is and which might even try to make the world a bit a better place. This is why I say I collect the money.