I shutter at these!

It's been awhile since I've tossed amazing aviation shots your way, so let's see what the best photographers are producing these days. Now you must promise to click on each photo in order to see the detail, okay? Let's start with the one above...one I shot. It's not an amazing shot, but the subject is interesting. Southwest Airlines likes to do theme planes, and one of the latest of these celebrates Tinker Bell and pixie dust. Now to the really good stuff.

You already knew this, but never go dallying around in front of a jet engine. The amount of suction these bad boys produce is incredible. In this shot, moisture on the runway is being pulled up into the engine in an astounding tornado-like vortex. Hey, you agreed to click on these photos! Do it!

It was God who said, "Let there be light". And soon thereafter, photographers said, "The best of us will maximize light!" Here's a Russian Airbus landing directly into the sun. And the sun exposes incredible detail.

Everybody likes sunsets, especially when you get purples and oranges:

Often, in the mornings, the air contains enough humidity that takeoffs and landings produce contrails, just like the ones you see six miles up trailing aircraft. Often, the wingtips produce wispy, delicate ones - like this slinky trail of circles tagging along behind an MD-11.

The Blue Angel pilots are the best in the business. Their performances walk the fine line between mind-boggling expertise and tragic failure every few seconds. Here are a couple of F-18's that seem to have merged. It's something called a "dirty mirror pass", for reasons that escape me. I just know I'd be looking out the cockpit window, too.

There is a photographer in Amsterdam who routinely produces miracles. He is Tim de Groot and this is but one of his amazing shots. Here he catches jet engine exhaust lit up by the sun, such that it appears to be an engine fire. Tim's pretty good, one of the world's best...and he's still in his teens.

Again, success in aviation photography is in proportion to how one uses light. Many of the most stunning shots capture usual light along with some other remarkable feature, such as weird clouds. Here's the final photo, one that does this perfectly: