A great weekend for the Great Lakes Folk Festival!

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Stephen LeBlanc by Patrick T Power

Stephen LeBlanc, photo by Patrick T Power

The annual Great Lakes Folk Festival takes place this weekend [August 8-10, 2008] in East Lansing. It showcases the traditional musical, art & cultural treasures of the upper Midwest along with a sampling of the best of traditional artists from around the country and the world.

The festival encourages cross-cultural understanding of our diverse society through the presentation of musicians, dancers, cooks, storytellers and craftspeople whose traditions are rooted in their communities.

The festival includes nearly 100 musicians or dancers in groups, who perform at least twice and sometimes as many as four times over the weekend. Also featured are traditional and other food vendors, craft vendors and many other individual artists/demonstrators. There are five performance stages (including one with a 2,400 sq. ft. dance floor), a children’s hands-on activity area, crafts demonstrations, and crafts marketplace. In addition there are special programs every year, which feature some aspect of traditional culture.

You can click for a listing of musical performers that run the gamut from bluegrass to zydeco to gospel to performers of all kinds of ethnic music that make up our shared musical experience. There’s a bunch of MP3s to listen to as well!

This photo is part of Patrick’s Great Lakes Folk Festival 2007 set (slideshow). You may also want to check out his 2005 and 2006 photos.

Isle Royale Sunset and the Great Lakes Sea Kayak Symposium

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Round Is. sunset

Round Is. sunset, photo by yooper1949.

Carl took this photo at Herring Bay in Isle Royale National Park. It’s part of his super-cool Isle Royale National Park (slideshow) which, in addition to having many more kayak photos, has some incredible views of this amazing Michigan park including a sweet shot of the northern lights over Amygdaloid Island Ranger Station (plus he has them uploaded at “wallpaper size”).

This weekend, July 17-20, 2008, head up to Grand Marais for the 24th annual Great Lakes Sea Kayak Symposium. It’s the oldest kayaking symposium on the Great Lakes and offers paddlers of all ages and abilities for a weekend packed with fun and learning opportunities including on-the-water classes, classroom lectures, kayak demos and vendors, social events, a race and of course plenty of opportunities to paddle including guided tours of the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Keynote speakers this year are adventure filmmaker and expedition sea-kayaker Justine Curgenven and Sam Crowley, who circumnavigated Ireland in 2007 in a sea kayak.

Ann Arbor Summer Festival 2008

Posted on by farlane

Ann Arbor Summer Festival 2008 by murn

Ann Arbor Summer Festival 2008, photo by murn

This photo is part of Myra’s Ann Arbor Summer Festival 2008: The 25th Season! set (slideshow). You can (and should) view this photo larger at Ann Arbor Summer Festival 2008 in Myra’s blog.She writes:

The 25th anniversary Festival’s “Top of the Park” featured aerialists, combat acrobats, blazing-hot performances, and dramatic storm clouds. I was running around like a kid in the world’s awesome-est candy store, trying desperately to document it all. When the curtain finally came down on this year’s Festival, and I at last had a chance to peruse the 3000+ images I’d shot, I was ever-so-slightly giddy: the images were tantalizingly lush, and they really captured the vibe, the spirit, and the excitement of “Top of the Park.”

Visit the Ann Arbor Summer Festival for more about this cool event and more of Myra’s work. I’m sure before too long it will include information of the 2009 A2 Summer Festival.

Photos from the 2008 Rothbury Music Festival

Posted on by farlane

Hey Snoop, Michigan Loves You, photo by Ann Teliczan

Ann was one of the lucky … 35,000 or 40,000 or so … who got to attend what will apparently be the 1st annual Rothbury Music Festival last weekend. She has a bunch more great HDR photos from Rothbury.

For more photos (which obviously come with a “these are pictures from a large & wild music festival” warning), check out Rothbury photos from Flickr (slideshow), the Freep’s Rothbury photo galleries, a large Rothbury gallery (with aerial photos) from mLive. mLive got pretty into the festival and by “pretty” I mean “surprisingly a lot” and they have all kinds of photo and other features like the t-shirts of Rothbury that you can find from their Rothbury wrapup.

Update! David McGowan over at humanfiles.com has a very cool Rothbury 08 gallery with 40 of his favorite shots and a second gallery with tons more!

Update, Part 2 Revolutionary Views Photography has some stunning Rothbury panoramas (and excellent photos too!)

I Wanna Go to Rothbury

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

anberlin_108

anberlin_108, photo by Nicole Rork.

GMNext Plug In offered Absolute Michigan a pair of tickets to the inaugural Rothbury Festival (this week – July 3-6) the other day. While it won’t top the Goose Lake International Music Festival as Michigan’s biggest ever, it is expected to draw upwards of 50,000 people and is packed with bands, entertainment and even educational/visioning opportunities.

To say that I wanted to go is a massive understatement. I yearn to go so badly that I can actually write “yearn” and not feel silly. (OK, I feel a little silly having written it) In the end, I couldn’t and neither could anyone else so we decided the thing to do was to give them away.

If you want a chance at 2 free Rothbury tickets, head over to the Rothbury Ticket Giveaway from GM Next & Absolute Michigan. It’s really easy to enter, so do it if you can go!

Nicole took this photo of the band Anberlin at the Jack Breslin Center in East Lansing and it’s just one of many amazing Live Music shots she has taken. If you like concert photography, you’ll love the slideshow.

Bathing Beauties in Northern Michigan

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Michigan Women Antique Northern MI Bathing Beauties Card Love It

Michigan Women Antique Northern MI Bathing Beauties Card Love It, photo by UpNorth Memories – Don Harrison.

I am sure that the publishers of this card intended the title to be slightly mocking.

When I saw it, however, I was struck by how much fun they appear to be having and how little they care about anything other than each other’s company and enjoying Michigan’s amazing watery fun.

Hope you get a chance to do some beautiful bathing of your own this summer, and also that you check out Don’s postcards (slideshow) because he posts them big and has hundreds and hundreds!

Michigan Drive-ins and the 75th anniversary of the drive-in

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Wayne Drive-In Theatre Marquee - Wayne, Michigan

Wayne Drive-In Theatre Marquee – Wayne, Michigan, photo by michigandriveins.

In recognition of yesterday’s 75th anniversary of the drive-in, WIRED Magazine featured June 6, 1933: A Car, a Movie, Some Popcorn and Thou. You have to check it out, if only for the photo of the reverse side of the world’s first drive-in movie screen (Richard M. Hollingshead, Jr’s Camden NJ theater) advertising the opportunity to SIT IN YOUR CAR – SEE AND HEAR MOVIES for 25¢ per car, 25¢ per person and $1 for 3 or more people.

About the above photo of the marquee of the Wayne Drive-In Theatre, michigandriveins writes:

What an amazing display this must have been to pass through. This giant neon masterpiece was apparently built by the Long Sign Company. Detroit-based Long also constructed the still-standing Commerce Drive-In Marquee, and the long-gone Waterford Drive-In Marquee.

Amazingly, the top portion of this marquee was saved during demolition. A Ford plant now stands on the grave of the Wayne Drive-In. When the Wayne went down in 1990, speakers, projectors, and three of it’s four screens went to the Ford-Wyoming 6-9 Drive-In in Dearborn, they are still in use today.

I’d like to hear from anyone connected with the Long Sign Co.

Much (much) more about Michigan’s drive-ins and drive in history at michigandriveins.com (also see Drive-in theater on Wikipedia).

You can get even more cool old photos, posters and history about drive-ins in general and in Michigan from the Drive-in Theater History page at WaterWinterWonderland.com.

It was in the period of the late 1930’s that the state of Michigan was introduced to the drive-in, with the opening of the so-called “Drive-In”, later known as the Eastside, on May 26, 1938 with the film “The Big Broadcast of 1938.” A Mr. John H. Flancher filed a petition in court in July of that year on behalf of the residents of 3 Detroit suburbs. His contention was that the new Theater could be heard from two miles away and should be deemed a public nuisance. Although the petition contained over 500 signatures, the case was dropped when the Theater agreed to take steps to alleviate the problem which seemed to satisfy the petitioners and the court. This would not be the last time a drive-in Theater operator would run afoul of the local community however.

I’ll leave you with the Michigan Drive-in Theater slideshow on Flickr (just the photos) and say I hope you and yours get a chance to take in a film or three at a Michigan drive-in this summer! (There are 10 open in Michigan today!

Michigan Jumpology

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Untitled, photo by LedaVL.

Leda writes that the trampoline was purchased for the kids … YEAH RIGHT! Check out this slideshow of Michigan jumping from The Jumping Project.

The Jumping Project group says they draw their vision from the pioneer of the jumping portrait, Philippe Halsman. Halsman was one of the most famous portrait photographers of the 20th Century and his work graced the covers and insides of Look, Esquire, the Saturday Evening Post, Paris Match, and especially Life.

He once explained his “jumpology” by saying that “When you ask a person to jump, his attention is mostly directed toward the act of jumping and the mask falls so that the real person appears.“. I was pretty surprised to learn from this Smithsonian article on Halsman that:

This odd idiom was born in 1952, Halsman said, after an arduous session photographing the Ford automobile family to celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary. As he relaxed with a drink offered by Mrs. Edsel Ford, the photographer was shocked to hear himself asking one of the grandest of Grosse Pointe’s grande dames if she would jump for his camera. “With my high heels?” she asked. But she gave it a try, unshod – after which her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Henry Ford II, wanted to jump too.

For the next six years, Halsman ended his portrait sessions by asking sitters to jump. It is a tribute to his powers of persuasion that Richard Nixon, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Judge Learned Hand (in his mid-80s at the time) and other figures not known for spontaneity could be talked into rising to the challenge of…well, rising to the challenge.

Might as well JUMP!

The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Must. Reach. Water.

Must. Reach. Water., photo by J.E.T.

This photo is part of Jesse’s Northern Expedition II set (slideshow) and – for me at least –  does the best job of all the 400+ Sleeping Bear photos that I’ve looked through today in capturing the wonder and wide-open fun of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

I’ve been doing that because today on Absolute Michigan I just finished Dig Michigan: Sleeping Bear Dunes. It’s a map, link and photo filled exploration of the national park in my backyard … I hope you like it.

skateboardingrevised: jack steezattack

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

jack steezattack

jack steezattack, photo by evan mckendry.

This photo is part of Evan’s skateboardingrevised set (slideshow).

…and because Michigan in Pictures is nothing if not slightly random, here’s a slightly random link to the world’s largest skateboard from Bay College in Escanaba (complete with “Bigfoot quality video”).