If you’ve ever been on the National Geographic Photography site then you already know that they feature some of the best, high quality photographs to be found on the internet.
What you may not know, however, is that the site has a special wallpapers section, and that the majority of images in the Photography site are available for download in wallpaper sizes (with a maximum width of at least 1280 pixels for most images, and some are available at 1600 pixels).
Note that there are in fact two different National Geographic URLs with two different wallpaper sections, here and here.
I recently stumbled on a wallpaper image from the National Geographic Photography site, completely by accident, and then went on to discover nothing less than a treasure trove of desktop wallpaper images.
Max Wallpaper size: 1280 pixel width vs 1600
It took me a while to figure out why it was that some images where offered at a max of 1280 pixel width while others at 1600 pixels. I finally found out that in fact there were TWO National Geographic URLs that offered downloadable wallpapers.
(1) The images from the http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/ site went up to a max of 1280 pixel width (and sometimes only to 1024), even in its Wallpaper section. Images in galleries will have a little “Wallpaper” download button on the bottom left (see screenshot to the right). Here are some interesting galleries from this site:
- Photo of the week
- Photo of the day archive
- Photo of the day: best of 2008
- Photo of the day: best of 2007
- Note that there is a “Photo of the day” gallery for each month; for example Photo of the day: best of October 2009
(2) The other URL is http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/, and only offers wallpaper downloads in its wallpaper section, with a better resolution that above at a width of 1600 pixels.
Use the dropdown on the top left to scroll through different galleries. The download link is below the image (see screenshot to the right).
The verdict: I cannot believe how cool these images are. Enjoy!!.
