I have the recent wallpaper…Col. Homestarrunner
A picture of Jupiter taken from the Voyager 2 satellite
Ah it’s the nicest, most serene shade of blue you’ll ever see. Unless you reinstall windows or return it to the default, that is.
Currently it is a photo of a big Western Gull stading on the edge of a cliff, with a backdrop of the Pacific Ocean, taken in La Jolla, CA. Yesterday it was a sunset shot on a lake taken Minnesota, and a couple days before that I think it was a photo of Katherine Heigl. I change it ever other day or so and tend to prefer nature shots of one sort or another ( landscapes and sunsets in particular ).
- Tamerlane
Last time I had any it was a b/w picture of death* scanned from a Sandman book.
*not DEATH, that would be creepy.
I have a picture of my laptop as my background. Like a picture in picture type thing.
I was surprised when I first saw my little brothers background. A close-up picture of G. Bush’s face. He’s got the exact same sense of humor as me. What could be better than a 21" close up of GW?
I’m also a big fan of Digital Blasphemy and other raytraced images, so these are usually what I use for my wallpaper, both at work and at home.
Charles Sheeler’s River Rouge Plant
At work: A scene from Fantasia* of three crocodiles in capes freaking out a hippo in a tutu.
At home: a '50s baton twirler from chickenhead.com
My desktop has a picture of my dog (Rupert, the Beagle of Death). My laptop has a picture I took of the sign for Blimpie Burger (“Cheaper Than Food!”) in Ann Arbor.
A picture of my kids, from Chirstmas time. 
It depends on how much you have on your desktop. To me, I hate having a lot of icons on my desktop…just seems cluttered to me. So I rarely have more than 5 or so. Placing those 5 icons in a location that I can see them isn’t a problem with most images I’ve used.
Right now I have a picture from the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, not for any particular reason, but just because I thought it looked interesting.
A nice shot of the lake taken from our cabin up north. The shutdown screen is the same view but at dusk, with purple and pink clouds.
A nice full screen closeup of Jake Zemke draggin’ his knee around a turn at Fontana.
My desktop wallpaper has night lights.
A painting of Zemus from Final Fantasy 2(4). Geek and loving it!
Mine is Alex from Clockwork Orange drinking his moloko staring viciously into nowhere with a big “Got Milk?” photo-shopped in the upper left corner. What can I say I am a Kubrik fan.
My work computer has a picture of my dog from when he was a puppy. Very cute, and as a picture of a black dog on a navy-blue blanket over dark-gray carpet, it’s a good working background as well. My home computer has a big ol’ golden poppy photo that came with the OS.
I, like most people, don’t do all that much work on the desktop, so I don’t really care about contrast. I do keep a lot of icons on my desktop, though, so some nice dark regions are good to have.
Another Hubble image here: the Ultra Deep Field shot that was released a couple of weeks ago. I could stare at it for hours.
A group of WW1 Sopwith Triplane fighters engaged in a dogfight.