Je bent nooit te oud om te leren

Wat, als ik een serieuze creatieve opleiding zou gaan doen, zodat ik mijn bedrijfskundige- en marketing kennis zou kunnen aanvullen? Ik zou dan eindelijk op de creatieve stoel kunnen gaan zitten. Bij Unilever had ik het liefst gewerkt aan creatieve trajecten, reclame, verpakkingen, webdesign, maar kreeg steeds te horen dat ik mij niet te veel moest bemoeien met het werk van de creatieven.

Ik besloot een portfolio te maken met mijn creatieve werk en leverde het in bij diverse kunstopleidingen in Hamburg. Uiteindelijk koos ik voor de Bildkunst Akademie, waar ik vier jaar lang een opleiding tot illustrator volgde. Op mijn 38ste zat ik ineens weer in de schoolbanken. Mijn jongste klasgenoot was 17 jaar. De jaren die volgden waren leerzaam, frustrerend en inspirerend. Ik had toen niet verwacht dat ik met mijn opgedane kennis kinderboeken zou gaan maken, een uitgeverij zou beginnen en websites zou gaan bouwen.

Inmiddels bestaat de uitgeverij niet meer en zijn we terug naar Nederland verhuisd. Het is goed zo. Ik ben blij dat ik toen uit de corporate ratrace ben gestapt en dat ik de creatieve afslag heb genomen. Het heeft ons leven verrijkt. Anders zouden we nu zeker niet in een huis wonen wat ik zelf ontworpen heb, beiden fotograferen en de verslagen van onze reizen op onze websites zetten. Bovendien was ik nooit bij Artiance beland waar ik nu weer mag stoeien met houtskool en acrylverf, iets waar ik thuis niet meer aan toe kom.

Urban Jungle

The collages below were not meant to be about corona and being locked up in an urban jungle. But maybe they reflect how I feel about all being confined to our own small world which is slowly starting to open up again. We are starting to plan our first photographic trip to Kenya after two years and four cancellations. So time to dream again about magic light, amazing landscapes and wild animals.

Stories about our travels can be found on Wild Picha Stories.

Our websites

Wild Picha is the website for photography by Willem and Tanja Dekker. Our travel galleries can be found under the tab Stories. The twikga website belonged to the twikga publishing company which was founded by Tanja Dekker in Hamburg in 2010. In 2016 we decided to move back to Holland and the company ceased to exist. The twikga name now stands for the illustrations of Tanja Dekker and the heritage of the twikga books. The twikga blog can now be found under twikga Stories.

Ikga twikga has found a new home on twikga stories. Ikga twikga was the blog of the twikga publishing company in Hamburg from 2010 until 2016, when the company seized to exist and Tanja and Willem decided to move back to Holland. The content of the blog was very precious to everybody who had worked on the twikga books. It was a kind of “logbook” of the making of the books, the illustrations, the writing, going to the Childrens Book Fair in Bologna, all the publicity we got. So I was shocked to find out that the blog had been hacked going as far back as 2014 and that content had been added which was not very “child friendly”. My first emotional reaction was to shut everything down and delete the blog. Now I am happy I did not choose that route. 

After some research I found out that WordPress blogs are often hacked and that there are a lot of companies who are offering products to clean your site and protect it from harm. So that is what I did back in 2016. The attacks did not stop though. The difference being that I could now monitor what happened and protective measures were keeping the bad guys out. Meanwhile Google had blacklisted the old blog. For a few years nothing much happened.

A fresh start was called for, so when we started to redesign our websites in 2020 I decide to move the clean content to a new site, to twikga stories. This turned out to be a tedious job. A lot of the images were old and not big enough for the new screens. But I hope that the layout somewhat compensates this and that the sentimental value will do the rest.

Desert lion in Remembering Lions book

We are proud to be part of the Remembering Lions book with one of our pictures. This is the fourth book in the Remembering Wildlife charity series which raises funds for projects working to protect lions in Africa. Sadly their numbers are declining and only around 20.000 of this iconic species are left. They are mostly threatened by expanding human populations leading to loss of habitat and natural prey, increasingly bringing them into conflict with humans and livestock.

Na ruim 25 jaar kwamen we terug naar de kust en het dorp waar we zo veel goede jeugd-herinneringen aan hebben. Willem en ik kennen elkaar al sinds de middelbare school tijd. We zijn beiden in Noord Holland opgegroeid. Na ons eindexamen wisten we niet hoe snel we hier weg moesten komen. Ik ging studeren in Zwitserland, later in Rotterdam. Daarna hebben we samen een wereldreis gemaakt. We gingen werken en verhuisden naar Hamburg. Nu, ruim 25 jaar later kwamen we graag terug naar de kust, de zee en het dorp waar we zo veel goede jeugd-herinneringen aan hebben. De lange zomers op het strand. Koffie drinken op terrasjes, de lampionnen-avond in Augustus. Spijbelen bij Nero. Dansen bij de Rainbow. Af en toe zie ik de oude schoolfoto’s van de Europese School op facebook langskomen. Wat een onschuldige tijd. En wat is er sindsdien veel gebeurd. Wie had gedacht dat we zo veel van de wereld zouden gaan zien en dat we nu maar wat graag terug naar de kust zouden willen komen.

Die schönste Stadt der Welt

Having lived in Hamburg for the last 15 years we have recently moved back to Holland. We loved living in the picturesque Treppenviertel, along the river Elbe and we miss it dearly. But “home sweet home” was calling and it is great to be near our family again.

Back in scenic Holland

Now we live in a typical Dutch house with a bell gable. We are busy building a house along the forest in Bergen, in the north of Holland, which is where we grew up. We love the beautiful beaches, the polders with its tulips in spring, the dunes and being able to ride a bicycle again without wearing a helmet. 

Willem won Remembering Rhinos contest

We are thrilled that Willem is one of the 10 winning photographers of the Remembering Rhinos photo contest. His winning picture of a desert adapted black rhino appears in the Remembering Rhinos book alongside the pictures donated by world’s top wildlife photographers. The book aims to document this beautiful animal for the world and future generations to see and to draw attention to the plight they are facing right now. Rhinos are endangered because they are poached for their horns which is worth more than its weight in gold due to the misguided belief in its ‘magical’ medicinal properties. All proceeds of the book will be used to protect rhinos in Africa and Asia. Willem took his winning picture in Damaraland, Namibia in 2014.