[Leica] When the right light isn't available, ask Alan Magayne-Roshak

[Brian Reid]

Alan Magayne-Roshak posted a breathtaking two-person wedding portrait 
last week.

http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alan+Magayne-Roshak/Portraits/20000916_MR_Beth_Wedding_A_11.jpg.html

I liked it so much that I spent a few hours going through his Portraits 
folder:

http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alan+Magayne-Roshak/Portraits/

I was blown away by the quality of everything there. These are 
magnificent portraits, every last one of them. Technically masterful as 
well as great poses.

So I started looking through his other albums.

http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alan+Magayne-Roshak/

He has 2000 pictures overall in his LUG gallery, and I can't claim to 
have studied all of them. But after a while, I started noticing a 
pattern. The lighting in his pictures is almost always masterful. So 
much so that I started wondering how he did it. It couldn't just be good 
luck or fortunate circumstances. Well, of course, skill. The man is a 
truly gifted photographer, and one of his gifts seems to be an ability 
and interest in perfecting the lighting in his pictures.

Curiosity about how he did it led me to start carefully reading the 
captions in his "Gear" folder and realized that he is also a truly 
gifted gear inventor (and obsessive collector). Besides having 9 light 
meters, he also shows lots of devices that he has built or modified to 
help make better photographs.

To quote two well-known but fictitious residents of a town near 
Milwaukee, Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar, "We are not worthy."