page_title: Ray McSavaney
section_title: Making a photograph
hierarchical_section_title: Ray McSavaney / Photography teacher / Making a photograph
caption_attribution_description: English: Ray McSavaney with his view camera at Factory Butte, UT, mid 90s
context_page_description: Ray McSavaney was an American fine-art photographer based in Los Angeles, California. Throughout a spartan but active life, practicing classical Western black and white fine art photography, he made enduring photographs of buildings, bridges, and street scenes of the vast city, ancient ruins and panoramic vistas of the Southwest, and studio setups with varied floral subjects. He passed away from lymphoma in Los Angeles Veteran's Hospital. Warm tributes to his life and career by some of his close friends and colleagues appear in a ‘celebration of life’ memorial recounted in ‘View Camera’ magazine.
context_section_description: When planning a photograph in the field, as if stalking his subject enacting Philip Hyde's motivation that "somewhere in this picture there's a photograph", McSavaney preferred to first inspect it from different locations and angles. It took him a while to make his photographs.  At such times, no doubt an Adams' admonition was not far from his mind: "a very small change in camera position can make a great difference in the visual relationships within the photograph". Peering at his subject through a cardboard cutout, rotating and extending it to frame the scene, his ‘viewing frame’, with dimensions proportional to the classic 4x5 film, enabled McSavaney to select the best vantage point.  By holding it at different viewing distances, it further allowed him to select the appropriate lens.  Parenthetically, he somewhat emulated Adams in use of the viewing frame as an aid to composition.  Having decided on the most advantageous location, he dropped the frame and retrieved his equipment.  Mounting the selected view camera lens, and submerging under his darkcloth, he adjusted the camera. Then, anticipating the decisive moment, if one existed in that context, he exposed his negatives.  Concerned about altering the natural tonalities of a subject, he rarely used lens filters, with their concomitant irreversible effects on a negative.  He would take care of any tonal dissonances later in the darkroom. 
  McSavaney's  preferred equipment was a lightweight wood field camera with a variety of lenses. He preferred a wide-angle lens — his preference was a 90 mm — because, as he said, it enabled him to get close to his subject. As they progressively became available, he used wide-angle lens up to the then latest 47 mm, enabling him to get even closer. 
  Even at the risk of running out of loaded film holders, he usually made at least two exposures.  Parenthetically, the necessity of carrying bulky film holders (anachronisms in the digital age) was considerably eased when Kodak's Readyload packets became available. McSavaney's spare negative was insurance against defects and allowed him to experiment with altering its tonalities in the darkroom as necessary for printing.   Occasionally he made a Polaroid print on the spot to decide on the best exposure for critical scenes. In the pre-digital age, it was a rare serious photographer who ventured into the wilds of the Southwest without a trusty Polaroid 4x5 film-pack adapter and several boxes of film. (Must read: Ansel's relationship with Edwin Land and Polaroid in ).  Many well-exposed polaroids are in McSavaney's archives.  He was a very careful photographer, sparing no effort, always with the final print in mind.   He practiced Adams’ dictum, that analogous to orchestral music, the negative is merely the score whereas the print is the concert performance.  Somewhat in the same vein, Oliver Gagliani, a good friend of Ansel, had a slightly different take by equating music to the language of the soul, photography to the language of the spirit. Bruce Barnbaum passionately equates his landscape photographs to his music.  Few photographers stray far from Adams' analogy, or far from the sound of music.
  McSavaney discusses some of those printing techniques in his book. He well knew Adams' wry observation on the occasional necessity for the fine art landscape photographer to use drastic exposure and processing techniques.  Ansel is rumored to have observed about a scene, ‘God had a poor eye for tonal relationships’ — especially for esthetically pleasing tones of a fine-art photograph.  
  Briefly, after making preliminary proofs to evaluate the possibilities of his negative, McSavaney decided the degree, if any, that he needed to alter it to achieve the final tonalities he wanted, and the print paper, developer, and toner to achieve them.  After making proof prints, he progressively evaluated the negative for necessary adjustments for which he used selenium toner or Spotone dyes, judiciously applied in localized areas.  During the enlarging process, he applied burning and dodging as necessary — again 
caption: McSavaney, Factory Butte, mid 90s, 
  by Ken Karagozian[56]
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