ABOUT / MIKE LEWIS
A swimmer’s eye.
A life in the water.
I’m Mike Lewis. I photograph swimming from the perspective of someone who has spent a lifetime in it.
The connection
comes first.
I grew up racing, carrying a camera to swim meets, and trying to catch the moment a butterfly swimmer broke the surface. Swimming took me to UC San Diego and into open water. Photography became another way of understanding the place where I felt most at home.
My approach is to blend in, respect the moment, and keep the attention on the swimmers. Over years together on deck and behind the scenes, familiarity has grown into trust. That matters most when athletes need the space to prepare and perform.
Sometimes that trust shows up as a glance before a race, or a moment shared after a world championship. Sometimes it means being able to photograph quietly without changing what is happening. I’m grateful for both.
Underwater, in the studio, or beside the blocks, I look for the person as well as the athlete: the character, feeling, and beauty of a sport that has shaped my life.
EXPERIENCE
A lifetime
around the sport.
I photographed the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Long before that, my career in Olympic sport management included work with the Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004 Games, alongside years in sports performance administration with the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Since 2010, I’ve photographed nearly every major U.S. domestic swimming championship, along with numerous World Aquatics World Championships and World Cups. I’ve also had the honor of documenting the International Swimming League and going behind the scenes at USA Swimming training camps.
My photography career has included serving as SwimSwam’s chief photographer and creating images for swimwear brands. I served as USA Swimming’s official photographer from 2019 to 2025, and in 2022 I was appointed one of World Aquatics’ official photographers. Through it all, the swimmers and the relationships remain at the heart of the work.
A DEFINING IMAGE
The photograph
that opened a door.
This ring-bubble photograph of Anthony Ervin helped launch my career. Our shoot following the 2012 Olympics led to a magazine cover and a turning point in how I saw the possibilities of my work.
It remains one of the images that means the most to me.
“I view my work as a collaboration between me and those on the other side of the lens.”
Selected publications & commissions
- Editorial
- My photographs have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Orange County Register, with magazine covers for SwimSwam, USA Swimming’s Splash, and U.S. Masters Swimming’s SWIMMER.
- Covers & special projects
- Michael Phelps’s Wheaties box following the Rio 2016 Olympics; the cover photograph for Katie Ledecky’s Just Add Water: My Swimming Life, published ahead of Paris 2024; and a cover photograph for Anthony Ervin’s Chasing Water.
- Swim brands
- Speedo, Arena, TYR, FINIS, A3 Performance, and DeBoer.
Selected interviews
IN CONVERSATIONCONTACT
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