I recently met Glenn and his family on an assignment for a local magazine.

His story is incredible and the family perspective is inspiring.

Glenn and his beautiful wife met 15 years ago and are raising three children. As the years went by, frantic days emulsified into a nostalgic blur of parenting, school, volunteering, and sports in their accelerating family journey.

That journey took an unforeseen tangent on February 25th when Glenn randomly nicked his finger while working on his motorcycle.

After a couple days, he didn’t feel well and called his doctor. A few days later he went to the hospital, spent five days intubated due to the pain of the bacterial infection, and woke up on March 5th to find out he had undergone a bilateral amputation of his legs and lost almost all of his fingers. After nearly two months in the hospital, most of it spent alone due to COVID, he went home on April 26th.

When I met them for the portrait session, Glenn had been home for three months and was a week into his first set of new prosthetic legs. We took beautiful photographs that capture where they are in their new journey, their togetherness and deep love for one another. One of my favorites from that session is below. Later that night, as I was editing the session images, I reflected on my conversations with Glenn, his wife and children, and felt the story wasn’t complete and there was one more image that needed to be made.

So a couple of days later Glenn came to my studio and I took this portrait.

In over 30 years of image making, this is one of the most powerful pictures I’ve ever taken.

Wilkerson Strong!