A Day in the Life : A Photographer Struggles to Capture Two Sides of L.A.--and a Spot for Himself in a New Book

“I like to cook,” hulking Dodgers’ rookie pitcher Tim Belcher is explaining to a reporter. “On a day when I am scheduled to pitch, I make breakfast pancakes for my wife and me, and for lunch I make us spaghetti. I also drink lots of iced tea and decaf coffee.”

With that, Belcher runs into the outfield at Dodger Stadium--and possibly into history. For as he muses about lunch and goes about his warm-up, his every move is photographed for a time capsule of unusually complex proportions.

In a single 24-hour period Friday, 100 newspaper and magazine photographers from around the world prowled the state and shot more than 6,000 rolls of film in a $1.4-million effort to capture “A Day in the Life of California.”

Coming Into Focus

Parties at homes in Malibu, a wedding at the Wayfarers’ Chapel in Rancho Palos Verdes, a school for future movie stunt people, a flower market, a manufacturer of neon lighting, the Pacific Stock Exchange, a pet cemetery, a card casino in Bell Gardens--the smog, the beaches, the traffic jams--all came into focus from pre-dawn until just before midnight.

And that was just in Los Angeles.

From the estimated 200,000 mostly color photographs produced on that one day, just 275 will be chosen for a coffee-table book due out in November from Collins Publishers. It will join seven other “A Day in the Life” books that already have chronicled the United States, Australia and the Soviet Union, among others.

Two of the California assignments fell to Randy Olson, an award-winning photographer from the Pittsburgh (Pa.) Press. In a race against time, he would search for exceptional images in two distinctly different corners of downtown Los Angeles--Dodger Stadium and Skid Row.

One would be an area the city would rather not be known for, the other a matter of pride. But together they would form a day in the life of a “Day in the Life” photographer.

Many hours before he will trudge across the stadium outfield in the more glamorous half of his assignment, the 30-year-old Olson is climbing three sets of stairs to the Los Angeles Mission on Los Angeles Street. Dawn plays no favorites, and the sun is rising over Olson on Skid Row just as it is over photographers in Malibu and Beverly Hills.

Olson has chosen to be here in the morning, having pleaded with his assignment editor to let him wander Skid Row instead of photographing Dodger pitcher Belcher and his wife breakfasting at their rented townhouse in Agoura. A scouting trip the day before convinced him he’d find better photos downtown.

As he hoped, the stark images pile up in quick succession: Men shaving and brushing their teeth at the mission before a long sink with 12 faucets. At Fifth and Crocker streets, a small knot of homeless people just beginning to stir on the sidewalk. A man waiting his turn to donate blood for money at a plasma center on Main Street.

“Would you mind if I took some pictures of you cleaning up?” he quietly asks the men at the mission. “Have you spent the night sleeping there?” he asks the street people.

Olson, alternating between Nikon and Leica cameras slung around his neck, strides through the scenes with the intensity of a man with just a few hours to capture the right shot. When he roams restlessly back to Fifth and Crocker an hour later, the homeless group is frying potatoes and fish on a grill over a fire in a trash can. One man tells Olson he has a degree in music. Olson squeezes off photos constantly.

At a cafe nearby, Olson spots a poignant sight at a table. A young mother eats grits and potatoes with one hand and holds in her other arm an infant she is feeding with a bottle.

“My name is Linda Flores, I am 31 years old, my daughter’s name is Violet, she is 2 1/2 months old,” the woman says as she accompanies Olson back to the Los Angeles Mission. “I am a battered wife, I live on welfare and I stay at a shelter for women.”

She later sits holding her baby in one of the pews of the chapel on the main floor, surrounded mostly by men, some of whom stare vacantly into space. Hymns sound from a loudspeaker. Ceiling fans whir overhead. Olson is in motion constantly, seldom pausing to chat.

“We are seeing new types of people on Skid Row,” says Walter Henson, 48, who is in the mission’s Residential Spiritual Growth Rehabilitation Program. “We are seeing people with college degrees, and middle-class people who have been driven to the streets because of economic conditions, and Vietnam vets. Not everybody here is on drugs and alcohol.”

Henson accompanies Olson as a sort of bodyguard and guide through the tough neighborhood. When a bystander quizzes Olson about the book project, the street-wise Henson advises: “Keep walking and keep talking.”

It’s not technically part of his assignment, but Olson can’t resist stopping at the Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market on the fringe of Skid Row. The reason: A man is racing a motor scooter along the concrete docks in front of the stalls. He says his family owns one of the companies.

Olson listens carefully and presses his finger to the shutter of a camera. It is not a day for small talk.

Back to the plasma center, then to the mission, where by now the 1 p.m. lunch feeding, the first of two, is under way. Olson gets shots of the men lining up for plates of ham, peas, rice, a slice of wheat bread, half a Danish and a glass of punch, downing it all while seated on rows of benches at long tables. Having sat through a 45-minute religious service in the chapel before the meal, the men eat quickly and depart.

Olson does too, heading for his room at the luxurious Biltmore Hotel to get a long lens he has rented in Los Angeles for the stadium shots. His wife, photographer Melissa Farlow, is also out shooting for the book at such places as the Palomino Club in North Hollywood and the Universal Studios Tour.

“I wonder what my wife is doing. . . .” he asks, leaving the question hanging as he rushes off to the stadium.

Less than a hour later, manager Tommy Lasorda is sitting behind the green desk in his office at Dodger Stadium, surrounded by walls covered by mostly autographed photos of celebrities. Olson walks in and introduces himself.

Lasorda has been told that Olson will be a familiar face around the stadium for the next seven or so hours. “You know, it’s a great nation,” Lasorda wisecracks by way of introduction, “but I’ll never understand why they haven’t put (former catcher) Joe Ferguson’s face on Mount Rushmore.”

Earlier, Olson said he hoped for access to a special event. “There is a possibility of Lasorda getting a haircut in his office,” he confided, and indeed Lasorda occasionally does have his hair trimmed at the stadium by his son, Tom Jr.

Although that isn’t to be the case Friday, Lasorda offers another exclusive. In a few hours the Dodgers will play the St. Louis Cardinals for the first time in the season, and the manager will hold a clubhouse meeting to review the visiting team with his players. Olson will be permitted a rare shot of Lasorda and the Dodgers just before the strategy session.

Meantime, pitcher Belcher arrives with catcher Rick Dempsey and infielder Jeff Hamilton. The three live near one another in Agoura and drive in together.

Olson’s original assignment suggested centering the photo story around Belcher, a successful rookie obtained late last season from Oakland. The photographer’s trip to Skid Row was to have been focused mostly on the midday lunch.

But now, Belcher becomes Olson’s obsession, and he haunts the player from clubhouse to tunnel and onto the sunlit playing field, as if making up for the lost morning.

Each photographer participating in the book project is paid $1,000 for the day’s work, regardless of which photos are selected for publication. But recognizing those long odds, the soft-spoken Olson--whose work at newspapers in Florida, Wisconsin, California and South Carolina brought him to the publishers’ attention--is frantic to make every moment count.

He wanders the stadium with a photo bag over his left shoulder, two cameras hanging from his neck and another draped over his right shoulder, a long telephoto lens on a tripod gripped in one hand like a portable rocket launcher. Lunch and dinner will have to wait.

The 6-foot, 4-inch Belcher has pitched the night before, striking out eight Chicago Cubs before being removed after running into trouble in the sixth inning. The Dodgers went on to lose 5 to 1. Now he stretches his muscles on two exercise rings in the bullpen, the constant object of Olson’s attention.

“I don’t know if I could ever adjust to living in a city this size,” the 26-year-old Belcher muses as Olson reloads. He comes from Sparta, Ohio, which has a population of 250. A day in the life of California is something new to him too.

Olson’s constant photography draws quizzical looks as batting practice for the Dodger pitchers begins. Why, after all, is this rookie getting so much attention? As right-hander Belcher takes his turn at the plate, bullpen coach Mark Cresse loudly serves as both play-by-play announcer and umpire judge.

But this particular session belongs to lefty pitcher Fernando Valenzuela, who slugs a towering home run over the right field fence. The other pitchers bow to him in mock respect.

About 6 p.m., the players are seated in their uniforms on folding chairs in front of their lockers. Standing at a table in the middle of the room is Lasorda, you-know-who at his side.

“This photo is for an important book,” Lasorda announces.

A boo sounds out.

“Don’t criticize your elders!” Lasorda shouts.

This time the photo session is brief indeed. Game time is nearing, and baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth would have to give a terribly good reason to stay. For the first time all day, doors close and Olson is locked out.

As the valuable minutes tick away, Olson roams the stands for crowd shots. He’s back on the field as the Dodgers stand at attention outside their left-field dugout for the singing of the National Anthem. Then into the press photographers’ well as the game begins. Belcher, wearing his blue Windbreaker, sips hot coffee nearby.

At 9:12 p.m., newly acquired Kirk Gibson belts a homer and the crowd of 44,301 jumps to its feet. Olson swings around for more spectator shots. “Things seem to be going well,” he reports, but the tension of the long day is obvious. He seems fatigued and now occasionally pauses to sit and rest.

Shortly before 10, as Ozzie Smith strikes out to end the game, the Dodgers winning it 6 to 4, Belcher and his teammates rush onto the field to congratulate each other. Olson clicks away.

Inside the clubhouse, the 220-pound Belcher sits in front of his locker, perhaps paradoxically sipping a diet cola and munching his share of a 5-foot submarine sandwich lying on a table in the manager’s office. Olson’s camera never seems to stop.

The photographer gives some thought to following Belcher home to Agoura for “just one more” before the day ends. Maybe a shot of Belcher and his wife, Teresa, snacking as they watch Johnny Carson from their sofa.

But Olson must abide by his assignment’s strict ground rules: No photos taken just before or just after midnight, to ensure the integrity of the book. He dismisses the thought as impractical, then thanks Belcher “for everything” and heads back to his hotel.

In 17 hours he has taken 28 rolls of color film and one of black-and-white. He has shot 1,044 frames, which he will deliver the next day to a conference room in a San Francisco hotel.

Then begins the real tension for Olson and the 99 other photographers who participated in the project. Organizers Rick Smolan, 38, and David Cohen, 33, who launched the book series in 1981 in Australia, will begin selecting photos for this book.

“It usually works out,” says Smolan, “that 20% of the photographers will wind up with nothing at all in the final version.”