Some news, and a bit of a leap.
The house has sold. In about a month, my wife Roni and I are packing up the car and driving south, out of Rhode Island and down to Florida’s Gulf Coast—not far from Venice, where my parents live.
I’ll be honest about why, because I think honesty is more interesting than a polished non-answer. The last few years have been a rough chapter. I’ve been working my way back from a spinal cord injury. Roni’s been through more surgeries on her leg, and more infections chasing behind them, than either of us ever expected to deal with. We’re both okay—better than okay, most days—but it’s been a lot, for a long stretch, and it’s taken more out of both of us than we like to admit.
So this move isn’t really about escaping a place. It’s about giving ourselves a reset. A chance to rebuild somewhere new, closer to family, with a little more sun and a little less snow shoveling. New coastline. New light. New chapter.
What isn’t changing: the camera still comes with me everywhere, and so does the reason I picked it up in the first place. If anything, I’m genuinely excited to find out what a Gulf Coast sunrise looks like through a viewfinder—and there’s a decent chance it ends up shaping the next chapter of The Art of the Seascape, which was always going to live near Venice eventually anyway. Funny how that works out.
What’s Paused, and What’s Not
In-person mentorships, Rhode Island workshops, and presentations are on pause while we get settled—packing a house, driving a thousand-some miles, and unpacking it again doesn’t leave a lot of room for anything else. Paused isn’t gone, though. Once we’re settled on the new coast, I fully intend to bring all of it back, wherever the new version of “local” turns out to be.
In the meantime, I didn’t want to just go quiet. So I’ve been building something I’ve wanted to do for a long time: free, self-paced photography lessons, right here on the site—starting with the exact questions everyone asks the first time they pick up a real camera. Lesson 1 is live now, with a new one dropping every week. It’s the kind of thing that travels well in a moving truck.
Thanks for reading this far, and for sticking around while things look a little different around here for a while. If you want to say hi, ask a photography question, or just tell me what you want the next lesson to cover, I’m at mike@mikedooleyphotography.com.
New coast, same curiosity. More soon.