Elder son and heir of Sir Cyril Holland Shakerley, 5th Baronet, by Elizabeth Averil, née Eardley-Wilmot, he was educated at Harrow School and Trinity College, Oxford.

After serving as a 2nd Lieutenant in the KRRC and studying for the Bar exams, he decided that his interest in photography would make a more fulfilling career.

Shakerley photographed the wedding of Prince Edward and Sophie Rhys-Jones; it was later admitted that Prince William's face was digitally enhanced by taking a happier smile from another photograph and placing it on some of the released shots to the press.

[2][3] He admitted to having used telephone directories, in time-honoured tradition, to adjust the height of some wedding guests in his shots.

[4] He married his first wife, the actress Virginia Maskell in 1962; the couple had two children, born in 1963 and 1966, but Maskell died, by suicide, in 1968, by taking an overdose of sleeping tablets, and from exposure after lying down in a wood.