About me

Born and raised in beautiful and creative Ireland, I came to the USA in 1987 and settled in sunny Tampa, Florida. My father was an avid and published photographer (Illustrated London News 1934), so I was raised with a Leica camera in my hand, shooting Kodachrome slide film. I learned how to print black and white in high school and got my first SLR in college, a fully programmable Canon A1 which I took on many trips around Ireland and Europe. I got my first Mac computer when they first came out in 1984 and learned on an early version of Photoshop soon after it was available in 1990. I played with some digital cameras, compact point and shoots, but converted to a Nikon D200 early in 2006, then the full frame sensor of the D600 in 2013, then the D850 in 2020. I helped to organize my first annual Help-Portrait session in December 2009  (where Scott Kelby was one of our editors) and met with others of the Tampa Bay Strobist Meetup group which I joined, and have become assistant organizer of. I continue to learn more and more from this amazing group of shooters who continue to inspire me to improve my image making. I became a founding Board member of Tampa Bay Society of Photographic Artists in 2016 and started exhibiting my images. I met Pierre Dutertre then became a represented artist with United Photographic Artists Gallery

I love shooting in the outdoors. I love shooting people, and also shoot my daughter’s volleyball team and anything I think will be interesting. I have learned to use Softboxes and umbrellas and numerous strobes including Nikon, Paul Buff and Godox. Joe McNally is a big hero of mine and I thank David Hobby for making strobist photography accessible to me when I needed to learn it.

I love editing using Lightroom Classic, my Wacom Intuos 4 tablet and onOne PhotoRaw.  I have attended Photoshop World and PPA, and am inspired by many of the great photographers out there, too numerous to mention.  I love studying the classical paintings of the great masters, especially the lighting styles of Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Vermeer, the color palettes of Ruebens, Monet and Van Gogh and the various compositional styles of many artists and photographers. I am a regular visitor and member of the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts in Tampa and have been a docent there for the past few years, leading groups around their exhibitions and discussing photography. I am a member of the Professional Photographers of America (PPA) and  Tampa Area Professional Photographers Association

I follow a number of Photo blogs, podcasts, including The Photographic Eye YouTube channel and other very varied web resources to continue to fuel my enthusiasm for photography.

As a practicing full time psychiatrist, (www.msheehan.yourmd.com) photography gives me the creative outlet I use to help me study and appreciate my world from a different perspective. I thank my father for starting me on this wonderful path of discovery.