I saw some Snow Leopard photos in the June 2008 National Geographic Magazine. They were photographed by Steve Winter during a National Geographic Expedition a few years ago. The photographs featured in NGM, and now they feature in the official wallpaper pack shipped with Snow Leopard. Was Steve Jobs reading that magazine, was he was inspired by these photos to name OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard”?
Click to enlarge the full size 2560x1600 wallpaper
I was helping with some spring cleaning today (It is Spring here in NZ), and I happened to come across a National Geographic Magazine; June 2008. You may have seen it, it had the Stonehenge on the front cover, and as the feature topic. Among other articles, it had a story on the Snow Leopards of Central Asia.
After cleaning out half the house (We’re too scared to attack the other half), I had a look inside, because the recent launch of Mac OS X 10.6 aka Snow Leopard had interested me in snow leopards. (I can’t afford a Mac…)
I saw in the article about snow leopards (Here is the link to the online NGM article), some photos of snow leopards which I immediately recognised from the official Snow Leopard wallpaper set.
Steve Winter (the Wildlife Photographer of the Year for 2008), photographed these snow leopards. It took him six whole weeks camping around the vicinity of the Himalayas, and 30,000 pictures from his sensor cameras just to get enough photos for the article! He could not get close enough to the leopards because shey are shy of humans, so he took photos by setting up a camera with sensors and leaving it overnight for snow leopards to set off. It was a sort a snow leopard trap, walk to0 close and Flash! Snap!, you get a portrait of yourself! There is a six minute video about the expedition on the NGM website at this link.
There is also a photogallery of Steve Winter’s snow leopard photos on his portfolio website, at this link.
The first photo is the most popular wallpaper, however I am not sure if this was from NG. The other two definitely are. There is another one too at the place where I sourced these OS X Snow Leopard wallpapers. Go to this link for the whole wallpaper set.
Why do I like these wallpapers? I like to put them on my linux laptop to make it look like a Mac.
I wonder how these NG photos ended up shipping with Snow Leopard. Did Apple buy exclusive rights for them? Were they in the public domain, or licensed?
Did Steve Jobs see them in the June 2008 magazine and decided he wanted them for his Mac desktop? Did he buy exclusive rights to these photos? Was he trying to promote awareness of the decreasing numbers of Snow Leopard? The fact that Apple has a history of enforced secrecy means that we may never know.
Enough wondering, time to sit back and wonder if a new iPod Touch with a camera will be announced at the music-themed Apple keynote event this month…(I am trying to save up for an iPod Touch)
My other favourite from the official wallpaper set is “Cirques”. Click to see the full size original.
