Mike Strickland Has "Left the Building"

by Rick Ferro

by Skip Cohen

​At 9:35 this morning, Mike Strickland passed away after injuries sustained in a serious car accident. He had been on life support for the past few days. As I share this post, all I can think about is that infectious smile of his. Lots of people smile, but very few have the kindness and love for life that matches.

Although we hadn't seen each other in a few years, that didn't stop the phone conversations every few months. It was as if each conversation ended with a comma and simply started up wherever we left off on the last call.

Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote, "I am a part of all that I have met." All you had to do was meet Mike one time, and he became a part of you.

I'm thinking back to so many of his stories from being a wedding photographer at Disney. There was the plus-size bride whose dress was too big and got stuck in the gate of the carriage trying to get out for the wedding. And the mother of the bride with macular degeneration who screamed in pain each time the flash went off. Mike had to shoot the wedding on available light, and spent hours cleaning them up in post-processing.

Those stories and others came out when a bunch of us were hanging out together at a convention. I asked all the photographers around the table to share stories from past wedding challenges. With each story, you couldn't miss how much Mike loved photography and his clients. He never did anything halfway!

There will be lots written over the next few days about Mike, his love for his family, photography, and his accomplishments. For now, all I wanted to do was share his passing with people who knew him. I will miss his smile, laughter, and never-ending sense of giving. I've never known a kinder man.

And to his wife, Janalyn, children and grand-children, thank you for sharing Mike with us. There wasn't a time when we talked that somewhere in the conversation you guys were a topic. He loved all of you so very much.

Grief comes in waves. And if you knew Mike well, this is just the first wave. We're faced with a difficult journey down Memory Lane. The one thing that makes me smile is thinking about Mike at the gates of heaven, catching up with people like Don Blair and Monte. As Rick Ferro said to me recently and wrote in the attached, the first thing Mike will do is look for great locations to photograph!

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