Hot Air Balloon Glow, photo by diane charvat
Diane took this last weekend at the Grand Rapids Balloon Festival (which I hadn’t heard of).
Check it out bigger and see more in her Hot Air Balloons slideshow.
More balloons on Michigan in Pictures.
Happy 128th Birthday to the Grand Hotel
Grand Night, photo by Wade Bryant
Sending out an early Happy 128th Birthday to The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island which opened on July 10, 1887. Here’s some historical highlights about Michigan’s most iconic hotel:
1887 Grand Hotel opens, billed as a summer retreat for vacationers who arrive by lake steamer from Chicago, Erie, Montreal, Detroit, and by rail from across the continent. Rates are $3 to $5 a night.
1890s Grand Hotel’s Front Porch – longest in the world—becomes the principal meeting place for all of Mackinac Island, as well as a promenade for the elderly and a “Flirtation Walk” for island romantics. Grand Hotel Manager James “The Comet” Hayes invites an agent of Edison Phonograph to conduct regular demonstrations of the new invention.
1895 Mark Twain lectures in the Grand Hotel Casino. Admission: $1.
1897 The West Wing is added to the hotel.
Turn of the century – The automobile finds its way onto the island. Grand Hotel supports an island-wide ban. A law is passed, but not strictly enforced until the 1930s.
1919 Hotel rates: $6 a day per person.
1935 A radio salon where patrons can listen to Jack Benny and other popular programs is added.
1947 This Time For Keeps starring Jimmy Durante and Esther Williams is filmed on the island and at Grand Hotel.
1960 Grand Hotel owner W. Stewart Woodfill appoints R.D. (Dan) Musser president of Grand Hotel.
1976 Musser and wife Amelia begin the redesign of the hotel’s interior and exterior with the help of architect Richard Bos and decorator Carleton Varney.
1979 The Mussers purchase Grand Hotel.
1980 Somewhere In Time, filmed at Grand Hotel and starring Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour, and Christopher Plummer, is released.
1989 The U.S. Department of Interior designates Grand Hotel a National Historic Landmark.
View Wade’s photo from May of 2010 background bigtacular and see more in his My Favorites slideshow.
More Grand Hotel and more Mackinac Island on Michigan in Pictures!
The Beacon
The Beacon, photo by Lou Peeples
Gorgeous shot of the Motor City from Lou. View it bigger, see lots more of his Detroit photos on Flickr and also check his work out at pointephotography.net.
Have a great weekend everyone!
Tis the Season
Untitled, photo by Jeff Caverly
Whatever you’re celebrating, I hope that you get the very best from this holiday season and that your life is filled with at least as much beauty & magic as is in this photo!
View Jeff’s photo background big and see more in his slideshow.
Geminid Meteor Showers this weekend!
Geminid Meteor…, photo by Ken Scott
As you’re making plans for this weekend, consider including some offbeat nightlife. EarthSky has everything you need to know about this weekends Geminid Meteor Shower:
The peak night of the 2014 Geminid meteor shower will probably occur on the night of December 13 (morning of December 14). The night before (December 12-13) may offer a decent sprinkling of meteors as well. Geminid meteors tend to be few and far between at early evening, but intensify in number as evening deepens into late night. A last quarter moon will rise around midnight, but Geminid meteors are bright! This shower favors Earth’s Northern Hemisphere.
…In a year when moonlight doesn’t obscure the view, you can easily see 50 or more Geminid meteors per hour on the peak night. However, in 2014, the waning moon will dampen the display in the peak viewing hours. Don’t let the moonlight discourage you. A good percentage of these yellow-colored Geminid meteors are quite bright and will overcome the moonlit skies.
The moon will rise quite late on December 13 and 14, creating a window of darkness for watching the Geminid shower in the evening. Keep in mind that the moon will rise about an hour earlier on December 13 than it will on December 14. Click here for custom sunrise/set calendar. Check boxes for moonrise/set times..
Even as the moon rises, however, it will be sitting low in the east. If possible, find a hedgerow of trees, a barn or some such thing to block out the moon. Sit in a moon shadow but at the same time, find an expansive view of sky. Or simply look away from the moon.
Read on for all kinds of viewing tips and all kinds of info about about this December meteor shower including the chance of seeing an earthgrazer meteor, a slow-moving, long-lasting meteor that travels horizontally across the sky.
View Ken’s photo from December 14, 2012 bigger and see more in his massive Skies Above slideshow.
More meteors on Michigan in Pictures!
The Upper Peninsula Night Sky
Tahquamenon Falls, by LakeSuperiorPhoto
It’s certainly no secret that one of my favorite Michigan photographers is Shawn Stockman Malone of Lake Superior Photo. The latest national outlet to recognize her work is Huffington Post Detroit, which assembled a collection of her UP Night Sky photos in a nice feature that says (in part):
Stockman-Malone runs photography gallery LakeSuperiorPhoto in Marquette, Michigan, a bustling college and former mining town on the Lake Superior coast.
…While Stockman-Malone does monitor sun weather to try to catch views of the Northern Lights, much of her work is guided by chance — and by being ready to photograph at any time. Once, her dog was scared and woke her up when lightning struck, and she caught a shot of the Northern Lights over the storm.
“You never know what Mother Nature has up her sleeve, and just hope you catch it,” Stockman-Malone said about her night photography practice in an email to The Huffington Post. “The Milky Way moves across the sky and can be found rising and setting in different directions throughout the year, so there will always be new perspectives in new locations. Same thing goes for moonrises and moonsets. Then there’s meteor showers, conjunction of planets, appearance of comets, etc. so there’s always something new happening.”
Click through for more and lots more incredible night shots!
View this photo and more bigger at Huffington Post Detroit, purchase prints at lakesuperiorphoto.com and get your daily dose of Upper Peninsula Amazing through the Lake Superior Photo Facebook.
#TBT: Midnight at the Burt Lake Scenic Tower
The Burt Lake Scenic Tower at Night, photo by Don…The UpNorth Memories Guy… Harrison
I am officially giving in to the TBT (ThrowBack Thursday) meme. I love history too much to let everyone else have all the fun…
Don writes that Burt Lake Scenic Tower had an early Carl Zeiss 42 Power Telescope for patrons to use, which was a very big deal at the time. See it big as a tower and see more in Don’s massive Photo Tribute to Michigan Historian Dave Tinder slideshow.
If you know anything more about it, please share in the comments!
More history on Michigan in Pictures.
Michigan Nut’s 2015 Calendar
Moonlit on the Mighty Mac, photo by John McCormick/Michigan Nut Photography
If you’ve been following Michigan in Pictures for any length of time, you’re probably familiar with the work of John McCormick aka Michigan Nut.
John has just released his 2015 Michigan Wild & Scenic Wall Calendar, and you can get it for just $15. As an added bonus, if you head over to like his post about it on Facebook, you have a chance to win a free one!
The photo above of the Mackinac Bridge is not only the cover of the calendar, it’s also the photo for June. View (and purchase) John’s photo bigger at MichiganNutPhotography.com, see more in his Michigan Bridges Gallery and definitely follow Michigan Nut Photography on Facebook for a regular dose of photographic awesome from the Great Lakes State!
There’s lots more from John on Michigan in Pictures too!!
First of its kind: Camelopardalids Meteor over DH Day
DH Day at Night, photo by Rudy Malmquist
Like many, Rudy stayed up really late to see what the new May Camelopardalids meteor shower would deliver. The answer was “Not a whole lot.” One thing they say is that predictions might have been a bot off and they will put on a show tonight. You can read about the whys and wherefores on EarthSky, but I’d like to make a couple of points.
One is that (as you can see from the photo) the skies last night were jaw-droppingly clear, providing some of the most amazing star gazing in recent memory.
The second (and I think the real payoff) is that those hardy folks who stayed up or dragged themselves out of bed saw an the first act of an event that could take recur for millennia. Having a chance to see the birth of something that operates on a cosmic timescale is pretty darned cool!
View Rudy’s photo of the DH Day Barn in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore bigger and see more in his slideshow.
More meteors on Michigan in Pictures!
Milky Way at Tahquamenon Falls
Milky Way at Tahquamenon Falls, photo by John McCormick
I try not to blog photos from the same photographer close together, but sometimes the photos have different ideas. John aka Michigan Nut took this shot on April 26th at Michigan’s largest waterfall and writes:
Upper Michigan still has over a foot of snow on the ground and the Tahquamenon river is RAGING from the runoff. The mist was freezing on my camera. I think the light on the left side of the image is coming from the little town of Paradise, Michigan.
The official Tahquamenon Falls Facebook has a great video of the spring flow which can approach 50,000 gallons per second!
View his photo of the Tahquamenon Falls bigger and see more in his jaw-dropping Michigan waterfalls slideshow.
More Tahquamenon Falls and more waterfalls on Michigan in Pictures.
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