Opened in 1923, the Millennium Biltmore is a landmark hotel and designated historic-cultural monument located across from Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles, California.
The Millennium Biltmore Hotel has been the setting for a long list of notable moments in pop culture history. Guests over the decades are too numerous to list, but in short they span movie stars, politicians, musicians, and A-listers from Charlie Chaplin to Taylor Swift.
The Biltmore Hotel hosted eight Academy Awards ceremonies throughout the 1930s, it's here that JFK became the presidential nominee during the 1960 Democratic National Convention, and it's where the Beatles came to stay on their first U.S. tour in 1964.
If some of these locations look familiar that's not surprising either, the Biltmore has been a filming location for movies including Beverly Hills Cop, Ghostbusters, and Independence Day - TV shows like 24 and Mad Men - and music videos for Britney Spears and Ed Sheeran.
What happens when a professional travel photographer can't travel? Well, for more than a month now I've been sharing a new image each day from around my hometown of Medicine Hat, Alberta on the Editing Luke Facebook page. While not exactly new territory for me, this lockdown-inspired series of posts has reached nearly half a million people since early May.
As an extension of my longing running Around the Hat series, what's been interesting about this self-imposed task is the reality of actually creating something new to post each day. It's one thing to share a portfolio of already completed work, but to shoot new scenes of a smaller prairie city like Medicine Hat and make them feel fresh over and over again after weeks of posts is a sizeable creative challenge - which is exactly the point.
While the daily posts won't continue indefinitely, as a creative distraction while travel restrictions are still in place, I'm thrilled the response has been so positive. It's one thing for a few images to be widely shared, but with each daily post now reaching thousands of people this side project has far exceeded the expectations I had for what was honestly just a personal endeavour to address my own boredom.
Expect at least another month of daily posts ahead - and take a moment to explore more of the daily images from the past few weeks here. For those interested, new limited release prints from this collection are currently in the works. Thank you all so much for the continued support!
