Year in Review: Pictures Worth a Terabyte

At the risk of being mistaken, at least momentarily, for some doe-eyed Pollyanna, today's blog will depart from the usual gloom for a brief bout of unabashed aviation boosterism. No, it's not the Xanax kicking in, just soaring inspiration from seeing how much enthusiasm and creative vitality some people bring to general aviation through the lens of a camera.

I couldn't help but feel this when I was editing today's video, which is a montage of many of the images readers sent us during 2014 as part of our popular Picture of the Week feature. Obviously, I couldn't include them all and just as obviously, not all of them were taken during 2014. They just arrived in our editorial bins this year.

All the photos picked have some merit or we wouldn't have published them. In scrolling the video, I'm sure you'll have your favorites, as do I. When I'm sorting photos, I have a predilection that favors photographs of people more and machines a little less. Without the people, the machines are inert assemblages of metal, fabric, rubber and fluids. Beautiful in their own right, but undeniably inanimate. If the airplanes are the music, the people are the lyrics.

I will concede to some indecisiveness in revealing that I have not one but two top picks. This first may be surprising; it's shaped by my lifelong interest in history, especially World War II. At 0:39 in the video and reproduced here, is a portrait of two men who loom large not just in World War II, but in the 20^th century. The photo was ably snapped by Joseph Horenkamp of Novi, Michigan. Anyone who has shot portraiture will tell you that it's difficult to do because the camera will not lie and if the subjects are not comfortable, it will not reveal enough of them to ignite the imagination of the viewer to fill in what the lens only suggests.

The two men are David Lee "Tex" Hill and Donald Lopez. Both led long, eventful lives. Hill was a Navy pilot before the U.S. entry into World War II, resigned his commission and joined the American Volunteer Group in China, eventually becoming a squadron commander. In 1942, after the U.S. entry into the war, he joined the USAAF 23^rd Fighter Group, where he continued to distinguish himself. He rose to the rank of Brigadier General before his retirement. Hill died in 2007.

Lopez also served in the 23^rd Fighter Group in the China-Burma-India theatre, where he became an ace by 1944. After the war, Lopez was a test pilot during the emergence of jet aircraft, a period he documented in Fighter Pilot's Heaven: Flight Testing the Early Jets. He later worked as an engineer on the Apollo and Skylab programs and was instrumental in the establishment of the National Air and Space Museum. When he died in 2008, the NASM's current director, Jack Dailey, noted that Lopez spent the first half of his life making history and the second half commemorating it. I never met Tex Hill, but I spoke to Lopez a couple of times in his role as a NASM director. What caught my eye in Horenkamp's photo was Lopez's smile; the camera's unerring capture of the man's warmth and generosity. The photo was taken in 2003 at the Yankee Air Museum, where Hill and Lopez were guest speakers.

Airplanes may be the base ingredient for aviation photography, but sure-fire condiments include kids, dogs and, if available, rainbows. In this widely popular Picture of the Week, Chuck Tippett got two out of three in a photo that can't help but provoke a smile. When I scrolled the list for video placement, I placed this one to get an extra second or two.

Why does it work so well? As clich as they have become, selfies still engage because everyone's in on the joke and no one expects too much. But here, Tippett's grin just plainly says, "this is what I'm talking about!" And anyone who stuffs the grandkids and the family Lab into a J-3 is both the coolest Grandpa on the planet and has such a highly evolved sense of fun, that only a terabyte of words could explain it all.

And I don't have that many. Thanks to all who sent photos and we wish you a happy, prosperous and above all, fun 2015.

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