Very Widescreen Wallpapers

You know, it’s hard enough to find a wallpaper you like. It’s much harder to find a multiple-monitor wallpaper you like, let alone one in the size and aspect ratio you want. Most of them are 2560×1024 dual-screeners.

I’ve been looking for years, trying to find wallpapers to span my incredibly unusual, constantly-changing desktop configuration. I have yet to find one with any images of any real quality. So I finally gave up and made some of my own.

Tools Required:
1. My new Canon PowerShot SD1000 7.1 Megapixel camera
2. One computer capable of installing a generic shareware Windows app
3. Time

At first I considered going to one of the myriad local colleges and renting a female student to lie in a very wide aspect ratio (i.e. flat on her back or belly); Obviously the more exciting poses are out of the question as the aspect ratio must be approximately 8:1. That is to say, the picture has to come out about eight times as wide as it is tall, to fit my desktop and not look stretched or squished.

Then I figured they’d probably think I was some creepy stalker from the Internet. Then we’d get into a debate about it being a half-truth, and other issues might come up with the friendly campus security folks (Who would pretend-arrest me while they wait for the real cops to show up). So I settled.

I went up to the top of a small mountain in town today and took some pictures; than crammed them all together into panoramas using AutoStitch, which does a really good job — Though you’ll need to Photoshop out a nice, rectangular area to use it for any real purpose.

Wallpapers are 8000×1200; thumbnails are 320×48. Should take a few seconds to download if your Internet connection doesn’t suck. Enjoy.

The pics are on my Multi-Monitor Resources page.