More of the photos here http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-photos-taken-from-an-airplane

Here is a list of photos with a flying theme that I compiled from the New York Times, 2012: The  Year in Pictures.

Mitt Romney tossed snacks to members of his press pool before his plane left Jacksonville, Fla., on Jan. 30. (Jan.-Feb., 3rd photo);

The space shuttle Discovery, bolted to a modified jet, above Washington on April 17, en route to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. (March-April, 10th);

President Obama boarded Air Force One in Boston on June 26 for a flight to Atlanta for a campaign swing through two states. (May-June, 10th);

On June 23, a plane dropped fire retardant on a blaze that had grown to an estimated 600 acres near Colorado Springs, Colo. (May-June, 11th);

Bobby Batts, a logistics manager, carried a painting of the Obama family from Air Force One after a day of campaigning in Florida and Ohio on Oct. 23. A former campaign volunteer gave the artwork to the president at a rally in Dayton, Ohio. (Sept.-Oct., 9th);

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan spoke on the tarmac in Denver before leaving on separate campaign planes on Oct. 24. Mr. Ryan left for Ohio, and Mr. Romney’s next stop was in Nevada.  (Sept.-Oct., 10th);

President Obama arrived at a campaign event in Lima, Ohio, on Nov. 2, just days before the election. (Nov.-Dec., 4th);

www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/30/sunday-review/2012-year-in-pictures.html

Tofino, Vancouver Island, Canada

I have just come across this contest and I would like to share it with you. I think the initiative is a great idea, and all of us when we travel and visit other places like to take pictures of monuments.

“Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) is a public photo competition around cultural heritage monuments, organized by Wikimedia chapters and groups. In 2010 it was organised in the Netherlands, and was followed by a Europe-wide 2011 edition. In 2012, Wiki Loves Monuments is going global and is organised in several countries around the world, including Chile, India, Panama, Ghana, the Philippines, Russia, South Africa and the United States.

The aim of the contest is to ask the general public—readers and users of Wikipedia, photographers, hobbyists, etc.—to take pictures of cultural heritage monuments (or “heritage sites”, depending on the local name) and upload them to Wikimedia Commons for use on Wikipedia.”

From FAQ

“Can I upload pictures from more than one country?

Yes! You are free to upload as many pictures as you want, from as many countries as you want — as long as they participate in Wiki Loves Monuments this year.”

“There are no restrictions on the number of national contests you can take part in; if you happen to have pictures from other countries (even if they were taken in the past), you can submit them to the competition and increase your chances to win a prize!

 What are the basic rules?

The rules—or “recommendations”, as we prefer to call them—for last year were agreed on during the meeting in Berlin. The six most important were identified as follow:

1. All photos participating in the competition had to be self-taken and self-uploaded;
2. Upload was made possible in September only, both to Wikimedia Commons and an interim external website, e.g. Flickr or Google Picasa;
3. The default licence was Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 (CC-BY-SA 3.0);
4. All eligible pictures had to have an identifier, given by the participants during upload;
5. Participants had to have their e-mail enabled on Wikimedia Commons (or the platform they uploaded their photos to) to be eligible for prizes;
6. Every country was able to nominate 10 pictures to the international stage of the competition.

We hope that at least some of those recommendations could be used in Wiki Loves Monuments 2012, but as it is going to be much bigger than the two previous editions combined, there surely might be a need to adjust them to fit the future requirements of the contest. The final decision on the rules will be taken jointly by all people involved in organising WLM 2012 in the months to come.”

The ‘Shaking Man’ sculpture is in the Yerba Buena Center, in San Francisco. It was created in 1993 by Terry Allen.

It should be renamed ‘The Banker’, ready to grab with all hands (the more the better) and to run at first sign of trouble (again the more legs the better).

This is a sculpture at the Vancouver International Airport; I have been running a few times to catch a flight but I hope I didn’t look like him .

Maui (Hawai’i)

Oahu (Hawai’i)

Haleakala crater, Maui (Hawai’i)

No, it is the Haleakala Crater in Maui (Hawai’i) – the answer to yesterday’s question.