I need a new desktop background.

In My Humble Opinion
1

I admit it. I have become bored with my current background. There is nothing wrong with it, I just have had it for a couple weeks. I prefer to pull something interesting from the internet. I don’t like the canned-everybody-has-it backgrounds. My current picture is the wizard from * The Dungeons of Daggorath*. In the past I’ve had: LOTR; dubyah compared to monkeys; shots of the cosmos; just black; mythological creatures;the guy who overloaded his car with building supplies, etc.

Please don’t supply a link to screensaver.com, or the like. Please DO supply a link to a really great photo of something that interests you.

Thanks, Bryan.

2

One of my favourite sources is here. It contains photos that were taken in Russia in the late 1800s to early 1900’s. The photographer, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, invented a technique to develop them in color, and the results are strangely beautiful.

You also may find something to your liking here if your tastes run to the odd and primitive.

3

Thanks PW, those are truly some incredible images from the Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii site.

4

I was going to mention http://www.digitalblasphmey.com, but that’s passe’ next to those. Is this the same guy who did a series of pre- WWI New York also?

5

http://www.digitalblasphemy.com, rather

sigh

6

Try http://www.webshots.com. Got some lovely pictures of a wide range of subjects. The photography is done by professionals, and are copyrighted IIRC. I prefer the nature ones, like sun and sky. You have to download something though. It cycles your pictures, etc. I’m boring you though. :slight_smile:

7

Saint, I don’t think he did any work outside of Russia, but I’m not sure. There’s another site here which seems to have just about every shot he published in his career as Tsar Nicholas’s official photographer.

8

Try http://www.tonymarsico.8m.com/page3.html for some, well, odd images.

9

Oh yes…did you know that Nicholas and his family were avid amateur photographers, and that Nicky I believe invested in studies in color photography. I’ll bet this is the one I’m thinking of.

I too love webshots. You dont’ have to make it cycling, if you don’t want to. It’s great.

10

This may not be what you’re looking for, but it was one of my favorites and turned out to be a good tool for evaluating the attitudes of my co-workers.

I downloaded a photo of Charles Manson, a face shot in which he’s looking particularly young and bug-eyed. Using Photoshop, I then replaced the swastika on his forehead with a little yellow ‘smile’ face.

Worked great as a conversation piece and a stress reliever.

–sublight.

11

I used to swear by propaganda.themes.org, but it’s gone now. It appears to have moved to http://www.ibiblio.org/propaganda/ . Sure, it’s strange - but the backgrounds are the greatest.

They used to come packaged so you could avoid all the ‘browsing’ nonsense, but I don’t know if you can still get them that way…

12

Here is one I use, every now and then. You have to stretch it, if you have more than 640 x 480, but it still looks pretty good stretched. I have a whole bunch of them, actually. I have one I like a lot which looks almost exactly like the old MS “Clouds” one, but mine has a bird flying in it, if you look closely.

The Astronomy Picture of the Day is a great source of Wallpaper, too.

Tris

“Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.” ~ Thomas Jefferson ~

13

This is realy helping to get me out of the unimaginative rut that I have been in.

Triskadecamus Those are some incredible shoots. I know I’ll be looking in on them regularly.

Saint Zero Thanks for the digtalblasphemy link.

Unixrat Terrific. This has made my day. It looks as though someone listened to a little too much Devo in their younger days.

BB

14

This site has many interesting things.
Also, you can never go wrong with Hubble images like those found at this site.

15

I use webshots, also, but I plug all sorts of other non-webshots pictures into my collections (like the stuff from Digital Blasphemy)

I also saved these fun images into one collection just for occasional inspiration.

16

Praise be to **Adam Yax ** and Chinaco, you have rescued me from my fit of unimaginativism.

17

I’m obsessive about backgrounds and often change mine multiple times a day, only to go back to the one i started with. Anyhow, I always love the ones at

http://www.chickenhead.com/bannertown/1.html

Also, for a look at what other people (specifically designers) have on their desktops, check out

http://www.k10k.net/frames.asp?section=ondisplay

18

This image is now my desktop background at work. Sick, and funny, and visually appealing.

The rest of the site has a lot of good images too.

19

I go to comic sites and download entire archives of strips that amuse me, then load them into Webshots and run them as wallpaper.

Or at least I would, if I had the commitment. It took me two solid nights of mindless tapping just to get six months of UserFriendly. Then I have to convert the whole lot into different imagetypes for Webshots, and go through them making sure it doesn’t resize them.

Anybody know how to get whole archives without actually working for it?

I know I can have daily strips sent, and I do, but that’s not amusing enough.