Shawn Clark

Photo by Miriam.

I remember the moment I realized I wanted to be a fine art photographer, and the exact image that brought me there. I was studying for a Bachelor of Arts in Forensic Photography. I shot the image from my car while stopped at a red light, and I knew instantly it was something special. When the print emerged from the color processor — a store owner in the Little Haiti neighborhood of Miami, Florida cleaning the sidewalk in front of her store, framed by the large steel door that protected her establishment, which is now gone — I realized my viewfinder was a window to a whole new world around me. My camera became a tool to explore the world, and an extension of who I am.

My first experience as a professional photographer was during 1997 when I was employed as an Executive Protection Agent and tasked with conducting surveillance of off-duty, uniformed police officers during several street festivals to verify they were providing the services the City required the organizer to pay for from the police department. During the next several years, I began to expand into other areas of photography, especially landscape and street photography. As my passion for photography grew, I realized forensic photography was a perfect blend of my law enforcement background and passion. During the fall of 2000 I began a what became a completely different path as my passion for photography quickly outgrew my job opportunities in forensics. After 9/11, even with an intense, 6-month experience photographing crime scenes and autopsies, the only positions available required me to either carry a gun again as a uniformed police officer with a camera in the car or become a certified autopsy technician. Some of my classmates went the later route, but I neither wanted to carry a gun nor clean cadavers, so I ended up in Alaska installing and repairing mini-lab equipment for Noritsu America.

Currently, I am working in two areas of the photographic industry. First, I have been operating Versatile Light, LLC since 2010. We provide photographic services and fine art sales to a variety of clients. Additionally, since 2013, I have been working at UHealth, the hospitals and clinics of the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami. First, as an Ophthalmic photographer at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute and then within the Enterprise Imaging group of the IT department where we worked to redefine visible light imaging and archiving for medical use. Our group of three had responsibilities that include development of applications and standards, camera testing and development, teaching photography and best practices to doctors and medical staff, and managing over 60 servers and 4 applications used by over 1,300 users. Since October 2018, I have been a member of the Cybersecurity team as the Healthcare Infrastructure Cybersecurity Manager for UHealth. My responsibilities include protecting our PACS and VNA systems. As part of the UHealth IT team I have been exposed to a wide range of systems and people. I have been fortunate to be able to speak at national conferences to international audiences about those things I am most passionate about. Recently, I have been involved in several, positive aspects of UHealth’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.