There's this place in Los Angeles, just south of Culver City, called the Baldwin Hills... it's an old oil dome, where Mobil Oil is still pumping crude out of the ground... Now up top on the northern edge of the thing, there's a park and some ball fields... From up there, you can look down on the old MGM (now Sony) and Culver studios... While to the northeast you can look over the roof tops all the way to Hollywood...

Okay, so one day in the mid 90s, I was up there in the morning, following a rainstorm the previous night, and I realized that with the smog and crud washed out of the air, you could see across the city at eye level with the "Hollywood" sign... It also occurred to me, that with a telephoto lens one could snap a photo that would look perhaps as if you were hovering in the air in front of the sign... Unfortunately, while I had my camera with me, I hadn't brought along either telephoto lens or tripod...

After that, following every rain shower, (which aren't that common in LA), I'd be certain to leave early, so that I could stop on my way to work and try to snap the photo... One time when I was up there, the air was clear, but a cloud was hovering over Mount Hollywood, casting it in shadow... Another time I took the photo but I hadn't brought the tripod, and the image blurred... eventually, however, I did get a passable photo, which I composed with an illustration of Wyndi the Teen-Trash Witch (as seen in Rip Off Comics #27)... It was at that point, that I realized the photo would look much better if taken at night, showing the city lights...

Soooo... all that effort wasted - Back to the Baldwin Hills again, I could take the night-time Photos, but the Hollywood Sign was far too dim at that distance... Fortunately, with Photoshop, I could cut out the sign from a photo taken during the day, to paste into a night photo... And so, eventually, the Wyndi Halloween Calendar Pix was made... Should you be curious, just click this link to view the Wyndi original...

Now, some decades later, I thought it might be fun to re-use the old photos with a contemporary Pix of Bunz and Katz doing the Halloweeny thing... but this time instead of a broom, updating the tech to riding on an AIM-9 Sidewinder Missile...

Note: My quest for a usable photo led me to scrambling about in other parts of the Hollywood Hills, in an attempt to find a closer viewpoint from which to photograph the sign... all in vain, ultimately... Though it did eventually culminate In my hiking up the Mountain to the actual sign itself... I knew I couldn't photograph it from a usable angle from that close - but once I'd figured out the route to get there, I just wanted to do it... Fortunately, "Mount Hollywood" is really just a big hill - but still, it's a long tiring walk to get up to the top, and worse to get back down... but that's a story for some other time... JQ