joe davis in the stands at dodger stadium, los angeles, calif. 7.20.19
in the heat of the summer baseball season i was sent to dodger stadium to photograph joe davis, the dodgers’ new announcer. joe had taken over for vin scully in 2017, replacing a legend. big shoes to fill. judging from the reactions of the crowd streaming into the stadium at seeing joe, he’s definitely been well received by fans.
i’ve only been to a handful of baseball games in my life – and truth be told, i i was mostly there for the hot dogs. while i’ve photographed in stadiums before, never have i done so as a game was about to start. the fact that these pictures don’t show the chaos of 50,000 people swarming into the stands is pure luck. at times the noise of the crowd was so loud that joe couldn’t even hear me directing him from ten feet away.
initially we were just supposed to shoot in the announcer’s booth — we did, but it was an extremely cramped space, where two other people were working as well. i’m very grateful that joe was willing to venture out to other locations around the stadium, ultimately. in the booth he looks out over the field, and we finished up our shoot there. joe sat on one side, and someone else sat on the opposite side. that other guy (whose name i did not catch), had his desk underneath a blue wall with the dodgers’ logo on it. i asked joe if he would switch with him for just 30 seconds. at that point the game was about to start and joe was busy doing his final prep. i was to be a fly on the wall. joe didn’t want to disrupt what everyone was doing and politely refused. knowing this was to be the shot, i took one frame of the other guy to show joe what i was thinking of. joe looked at it on the back of the camera, frowned and said “yeah, that’s better”. it ended up being the cover. my thanks to the fine people at beloit college for an outstanding layout - even though i do prefer that lead image in black & white!
