14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft managed to include a consistent collection of imagery into Windows Vista, but it failed to come even close to satisfying the entire spectrum of user preferences and, moreover, it went for quality over quantity. In this regard, the default Vistas which ship with the operating system, suffer only because of their low number. Well, users in search of similar photographic artwork for the Vista backgrounds around the word can tap an excellent resource of no less than 135 extra Vistas made available by Mike Swanson, an extremely talented Microsoft Technical Evangelist with the Developer and Platform Evangelism organization, and not that bad of a photographer either.
The missing Windows Vista wallpapers are not Swanson's label. But since one of his images was included among the very exclusive selection of photographs offered with the latest Windows client, it is an obvious case of if the shoe fits... But mainly because Swanson is very consistent in his photographic perspective, and in the style applied to the wallpapers he produces. The 135 wallpapers collection comprised largely of insignificant but superb details is just an insight into the author's unique and artistic view of the world.
The images are available in 1920 x 1200 (16:10 aspect ratio, "widescreen") and 1600 x 1200 (4:3 aspect ratio, "standard"), according to Swanson, who has set up a download page, gathering the wallpapers in a single location (download via this link). The backlit banana leaf wallpaper is already on in excess of 140 million computers around the world as of March 2008, but the content made available separately by Swanson has also enjoyed immense success, as the number of downloads indicate. At the same time, if any users are interested in the techniques used by the author to produce the wallpapers, an online tutorial is available here.
"I watched the stats for my wallpaper page tick past one million a few days ago," he revealed back in mid April. "Wow! If you'd have told me when I posted my first macro photo years ago that it'd be the most popular page on my blog (by a long shot), I wouldn't have believed it. I haven't actually added up the individual downloads, but it would easily exceed one million, since I get a lot of direct links from other sites. I average a little over 4GB downloaded each day. Interestingly, more people download the widescreen versions of my wallpaper than the standard ones. I wouldn't have expected that."