June is Pride Month, a time to honor all LGBTQI+ people who are fighting to live authentically and freely. Pride Month is part of a broader ongoing struggle against intolerance, discrimination, and injustice. Diversity is one of our strengths and we must not allow it to be weakened by divisiveness and hatred. As a member of this community, I want to my small part to help to raise awareness and broader acceptance
The first image is from a photoshoot that I did last year with my dear friend Cindy Dyer and features my Pride edition Converse All-Stars. As you can tell I am pretty flexible. Cindy and I had a fun time in our studio as we tried to think of creative ways to feature my colorful sneakers.
The second shot was from the same session. We took lots of photos last year and Cindy featured some of them in two postings on her blog entitled In the studio with Michael Powell and In the studio with Michael Powell (in action!). Yesterday we went over the photos from a year and selected a few more to share. We tried out a number of different looks, including matching a Pride t-shirt with an old tuxedo jacket that I happen to own, which made for a cool and quirky look.
Cindy takes wonderful portraits and we took some more serious shots during our session last year, including the final shot below, which some of my friends have suggested needs to be on a book jacket. We played around with the image yesterday and Cindy decided to convert it to black and white in order to really draw attention to my eyes and away from the varying colors of my face when viewed up close.
Wow—Cindy is a magician with her camera!
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
Great photos. I absolutely LOVE those sneakers. ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
👍👍😎❤️
Love these photos! Happy Pride Month! This mama bear will never stop fighting. 🏳️⚧️ 🏳️🌈
Embrace diversity, it makes life way more interesting 😀
I remember your photoshoot from last year and how much I coveted your shoes. I really love the tuxedo jacket photo.
Thanks, Laura. I really did have so much fun dressing up in cool and quirky combinations. Converse has some interesting custom Pride shoes, but I am not sure they are still making the ones that I was wearing in the photos.
Great fun images, Mike. And in that last one you have a mysterious look. Happy Pride month!
Thanks, Chris. I like idea of sharing different sides of myself on the blog, because it helps to provide a more complete view of me as a person. I don’t want to be pigeonholed as “the dragonfly guy” or even “the wildlife photographer.” I know that you make great efforts, Chris, to provide a balanced view of your life on the water–it would be so easy to provide an overly romanticized view, like many do on social media, but you definitely do not hide the immense challenges and costs involved. In that sense, I think we both strive for sense of authenticity in what we write.
Very well said, Mike.
Awesome photos! You look great. No wonder you can still crawl around on the ground for those tough shots. 🌈
Thanks, Cindy. I am pretty flexible, so at least for now I have no trouble getting down on the ground (or getting up). I like to walk around a lot when I am looking for subjects to photograph and I think that helps me to keep in relatively good shape.
Love those shoes! Happy Pride. 🌈🏳️🌈
Thanks. Wearing such colorful shoes is a quirky, colorful way to show my Pride. Lots of folks seem to love the look. 🙂
I had remembered seeing these amazing pictures on a day I had scrolled when I was not feeling well. I had to come back to find them. Happy late Pride Month! You look amazing and I particularly love the tux, shoes of course, your smile, and the last pic is phenomenal too!