282 - Before the Storm

I am in Germany. Worms, to be precise. The city called “Worms” I mean. We arrived yesterday evening, and we will stay at least until Thursday, because for that evening we have tickets for the “Nibelungen” festival. No, it’s not opera, it’s not Wagner (that would be Bayreuth in Bavaria), it’s theater, a modern play performed in front of the facade of Worms’ medieval cathedral. It is a festival that is now in its fifth year and seems to do well.

I shot this image yesterday, somewhere on a rest area at the highway in Bavaria. We were not affected by the severe thunderstorms there, but we were not far away either. This lone, brightly red hanger in front of the storm sky fascinated me, and after some surgery, removing a waste basket, a traffic sign and some other minor distractions, color correction, bumping saturation, increasing contrast in the clouds, etc, it looks exactly as I wanted it to. Somehow surreal.

Nikon 18-200 VR at 50mm, f4.8 and 1/125s, post-processing in Photoshop.

I have only part of my music collection with me, but the word “storm” makes no problem. The Song of the Day is Harold Arlen’s “Stormy Weather”, one of my most beloved Jazz standards since the first time I heard it sung in Derek Jarman’s movie adaption of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”.

But it is neither this nor any other of the popular interpretations that we hear today. We are in Germany, and the Song of the Day is a French version, “Quand II Pleut”, sung by the famous German 1930s a-capella band “The Comedian Harmonists”. I have it on part one of a “Greatest Hits” album.