Mike Dooley is a fine art photographer based in Warwick, Rhode Island, shooting seascapes and landscapes across New England, with the Florida Gulf Coast starting to work its way in. He’s a U.S. Air Force veteran, a former president of the Photographic Society of Rhode Island, and his work’s been featured by NBC News and Shutterbug Magazine. Prints hang in homes, offices, restaurants, and medical waiting rooms around the region.
Why I Do This
I’m not going to tell you I always knew I’d end up here. Photography started as a way to notice something — the way light hits water at 5am when nobody else is awake yet — and it turned into the thing I actually build my mornings around.
A few years back I went through a long stretch where getting out with a camera wasn’t something I could take for granted. I won’t make this page about that. Just know that when I’m standing on a rock at sunrise now, I don’t take it for granted either.
What You’re Actually Looking At
If you’re here because you want something for a wall — yours, an office, a waiting room, wherever — that’s really what this is about. I shoot the coast because a lot of people never get five quiet minutes to stand in front of it themselves. A print’s my attempt at handing you those five minutes.
The Boring, Honest Bio Part
It’s just me. I shoot it, edit it, print it, pack it, and ship it — no studio, no staff, no assistant holding a reflector. Before this I spent years in the Air Force, then another 30 in tech — hardware, networking, enterprise software — which probably explains why I think about a shoot the same way I’d think about troubleshooting a system: figure out what’s actually going on, then go get it.
Along the way:
- President, Photographic Society of Rhode Island (PSRI)
- Co-founder and instructor, The Photographers Connection
- Featured by NBC News and Shutterbug Magazine
- Author, Through My Eyes
- Veteran, United States Air Force
If you want the actual stories behind these photos — the ones with the real weather, the wrong lens, the shot that almost didn’t happen — that’s what Behind the Print is for. If you’re just here to look at prints, they live here.