Autumn

Autumn, originally known as Autumn Leaves, is a wallpaper included in Windows XP, licensed from Corbis. It was taken by Peter Burian in October 1999. It depicts a road covered in leaves in Burlington, Ontario, Canada. There is also a vertical version; both are no longer available on Getty Images or other stock photo sites with the exception of Photononstop.

History
Peter Burian took hundreds of autumn lane frames with a Nikon F90 in Burlington, Ontario, Canada during October 1999, as he was testing lenses for a photography magazine. At the time, Burian did not think of it much and therefore did not expect it would become so popular years later.

He would subsequently submit two of these shots to Corbis as royalty free images, one being horizontal and the other vertical. Corbis appears to own the rights to them, although he got 15% of the sales from it. In 2001 Microsoft bought a license to the horizontal version for around $300 for Windows XP's wallpaper set (where he received $45), where it has become his most successful and well known image. Although it is not as well known as the default wallpaper Bliss, it is still one of the most popular XP wallpapers.

During 2006-07, Vanity Fair journalist Nick Tosches, fascinated with Autumn, decided to track down where Autumn was taken, a process that took several months of contacting people and browsing online. Eventually he was informed by Microsoft that it originated from Bill Gates' stock photo agency Corbis, so he found its Corbis page, which did not mention its photographer due to Corbis owning the rights to the photo, nor did it even mention its location. The only useful information it provided was the month and year taken. However, Vanity Fair's senior photo research editor Ann Schneider was able to find out the photographer's name.

Tosches contacted Burian, who had also become interested in tracking down the location of the photo. Eventually he found it; he even contacted the property's current owner who agreed that it was the right spot. According to Burian, the lane leads to a farmhouse formerly owned by the Harris family, who were one of the first European settlers in Burlington. Tosches' findings would be discussed in a 2007 Vanity Fair article titled Autumn and the Plot Against Me.

Legacy
The image went on to become one of Burian's most licensed images, as he earned slightly under $800 in income from it, which could imply it was licensed 17 times. Burian did not expect that the photo would become such a big deal, although he has described his "15 minutes of fame" as "fun". Ever since, he has taken more photos at the same spot, including a winter version. He still has a high res copy of the horizontal version, although one of his rescanned versions rather than the darker version that was available on Corbis, which was likely scanned by the company themselves.

Like with Bliss, several tribute shots of the same place have been taken, including one by Joseph John in 2015, showing that its appearance hasn't changed that much unlike with Bliss.

Variations
There are quite a few variations of this image.


 * One of them is similar to the version used in XP, albeit taken vertically, therefore showing more of one of the trees. This version is titled Autumn Leaves Falling on Road. It is also the version of Autumn that appears in Tosches' Vanity Fair article about the image.
 * Burian has also uploaded his own version of the horizontal shot to 500px twice in 2012 and 2014; both of the two copies present on 500px appear to be brighter than the original Corbis version (with the 2014 upload being slightly closer to the Corbis original), which is still available at French stock photo agency Photononstop along with the vertical Corbis version. Both have copyright watermarks, with rather inaccurate years: the 2012 upload states 2005 and the 2014 upload states 2002.

Names in other languages
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Trivia

 * The Windows Vista sample picture Autumn Leaves shares its name with Autumn’s original title.