Sometimes you choose a color before you understand why you need it.
Last summer, Winston spotted a Kingfisher-blue cable-knit sweater from across Smiling Acres at Wild Zen Yoga Fest. It was the middle of summer; it was a heavyweight cotton sweater, and there was absolutely no practical reason to buy it.
He bought it anyway.
Over the next year, that sweater became a staple. He wore it reading outside, walking through the woods, engaging with nature, and finding little pockets of peace. The heavyweight cotton wrapped around him almost like a hug, and somehow putting it on made even the simplest things feel a little more intentional.
A year later, that color led us to his bird: the Belted Kingfisher.
How We Met
Winston and I first met at Wild Zen, but I really got to know him through movement. We’ve crossed paths on dance floors at ecstatic dances and mindful movement experiences around Grand Rapids, and Winston has a wonderful flow. He looks incredibly comfortable in his body.
But he told me that wasn’t always true.
Learning to move freely and play in front of other people has been a process for both of us. Sometimes we need spaces where everyone agrees to be a little weird together. Someone closes their eyes and starts dancing, someone else takes up more space, and suddenly we have permission to do it too.
There is something about dancing beside another person that allows you to know them differently.
Who He Is
By day, Winston is a Process Engineer, working within systems designed to give scrap metal, paper, plastics, and electronics another life. He has a groundedness that makes engineering feel like a natural fit. He likes understanding how things work, but he also really likes to play.
After the end of a relationship and getting sober, Winston needed to discover new places for that play. He found some of it through dance and mindful movement spaces around Grand Rapids. He found more through yoga, breathwork, nature, and community.
Yoga feels good in his body, but he also loves what happens when a room full of people intentionally moves and breathes together. Recovery created space in Winston’s life, and he’s been figuring out what he wants to fill it with.
Why the Belted Kingfisher
The first connection was simply blue.
That vivid Kingfisher blue called to Winston from across a field before either of us knew it would eventually become part of a bird portrait. But the more I thought about the Belted Kingfisher, the more the emotional connection made sense.
Kingfishers spend much of their lives close to water, often perched quietly above rivers and shorelines. They watch and wait, but when the moment arrives, they commit completely, plunging headfirst into the water after what they’ve been looking for.
I love that combination of stillness and action.
Winston carries both. He’s an engineer who dances. He’s grounded, but he plays. He can sit peacefully with a book in the woods and then lose himself in movement alongside a room full of people.
The Kingfisher doesn’t have to choose between stillness and wildness. Neither do we.
The Look
This portrait began with a piece Winston already loved: his Kingfisher-blue J.Crew cable-knit Fisherman Sweater, made from heavyweight cotton and Dash-Dyed at More Joy.
We added a long golden-brown rayon scarf to reference the rusty belt across the female Belted Kingfisher’s chest. That was really all we needed. Blue, brown, movement, and a piece of clothing that already carried a year of memories.
One of my favorite things about photographing Winston was knowing he’d actually lived in this sweater.
These clothes aren’t meant to be precious. They’re meant to go into the woods and sit beside rivers. They’re meant to dance, stretch, get dirty, be washed, and be worn again.
They’re meant to be played in.
They’re meant to become yours.
The Session
We met at my studio first and shared stories about recovery. We’re both sober from alcohol, and it was meaningful discovering some of the ways our paths overlap. We’ve both leaned into yoga, breathwork, movement, and learning how to inhabit our lives differently.
Then we headed to Riverside Park at sunset.
We walked through the river, played around the ducks, skipped stones, and eventually started following the water farther than I’d ever explored before. We worked our way upstream until we discovered a quiet little place tucked into the woods that felt like it had been waiting for us.
The sunlight suddenly poured through the trees, and Winston looked around and said he felt like a Hobbit—in a good way.
At some point, we weren’t really posing anymore. We were just adventuring.
Winston moved through the water and played with the Golden Brown scarf. His body already understood how to move with wind and fabric. There was an ease to him that I loved watching through my camera—a deep comfort existing inside his own body.
And I realized that Winston didn’t really need to become the Kingfisher for my camera.
He’d been settling into this bird for the last year.
Color Connection
Kingfisher Blue feels like freedom, expression, depth, and peace. It’s the color of both sky and water, somehow expansive and grounding at the same time.
For Winston, this particular blue became associated with the moments when he felt most himself: reading, walking, moving, breathing, and being outside. It became a color he could actually live in.
Golden Brown brings all that blue back toward the earth. It carries warmth, grounding, resilience, and stability. It reminds me that freedom doesn’t always mean escaping. Sometimes freedom is becoming grounded enough to stay.
Together, Kingfisher Blue and Golden Brown hold the same duality I see in Winston: movement and stillness, water and earth, play and peace.
Dive In
Recovery asks you to give something up, but eventually another question emerges:
What are you making room for?
For Winston, some of the answer has been movement, nature, yoga, community, books, breath, and play.
And apparently buying an extremely heavy cotton sweater at a yoga festival in the middle of summer.
I’m glad he followed that impulse.
Sometimes we recognize what makes us feel more like ourselves before we understand why. Maybe that’s what I love about the Kingfisher. It can sit quietly beside the water for a long time, watching and waiting.
But when it sees what it’s looking for, it dives.
Winston, keep diving. There’s so much more river to explore.
Join the Flock
Power Portraits invites you to play with color, movement, nature, and the person you’re becoming.
Sometimes we find the bird first. Sometimes we start with a color we can’t stop thinking about.
Either way, let’s follow it and see where it takes us.
