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TRAVEL JOURNAL PHOTOS Trip
favorites Rock am Ring Cities |
Rock am Ring I am currently writing from a hillside villa 15KM outside of Wiesbaden, Germany. Here, my friend Mirja let me set up shop to send pictures to Rolling Stone. Last weekend, I covered Germany's largest summer music festival, Rock am Ring. Headliners included Counting Crows, Jewel, Santana and Lenny Kravitz. I edited 1000 pictures down to about 35. To sort the 27 rolls of film, I hung them uncut from a clothesline, creating a wall of negatives five feet tall and seven feet wide. I used a hole punch to mark choices. Although I wasn't able to take pictures backstage, I got very close to the performers on stage--the photo area was the front seven feet of the stage. In front of over 60,000 people, I was tempted to pick my nose and scratch my ass. At one point, I took pictures standing next to Jamiroquai. The second day of the festival was cold and rainy--when Jamiroquai exhaled, he looked like a steam engine. I felt really bad for when Natalie Merchant came on stage. NONE of the photographers were paying attention. Three enterprising girls in the front of the crowd found a creative way to steal her thunder. The worst of the pictures will not be taken to Wal-Mart. Mirja and Boris, whom I rode to the festival with, have experience with anesthesiology. While with them, I was half expecting to wake up with some of my organs missing. Mirja says she wouldn't mind the cash. She explained that her hospital has a transplant unit and I really only one kidney. During the drive to the festival, I was completely awake but wouldn't have objected to being sedated. We took a very narrow and winding road with many hairpin curves. None of the curves had arrows or warnings to slow down. I'm happy we didn't hit any trees or oncoming cars. One part of the road wasn't wide enough for opposing traffic--cars had to straddle the shoulder to go past each other. Before arriving in Germany, I spent my last day in France in Cannes, on the first day of its film festival. I saw several people from my hostel but nobody famous. I later read in Variety that VIPs travel between hotels via underground tunnels. P.S. Rolling Stone didn’t end up buying any pictures, but the photo editors at their US and German editions still like me and my work. The latter called me "sweet" and gave me her direct line for future calls. |
