Img22 (Windows Vista)

img22 is a wallpaper included in Windows Vista. It was taken by Microsoft employee Steve Fu on August 17, 2003. It depicts a part of the Enchantment Lakes Basin in Cascade Range, Washington, USA at dawn. Although it did not appear in the official Vista Beta 2 build, it was included as the default wallpaper of builds 5469 to 5840.16384; build 5840.16389 onwards changed the default wallpaper to an abstract aurora, while reallocating the previous one to img22.

History
Due to a reservation cancellation, Steve Fu was allowed to access the park at Enchantment Lakes Basin in Cascade Range, Washington, USA, where he took the photo on August 17, 2003 around 5:00 am. He used a Nikon D100, with an 18-35 millimeter lens.

Three years on, Fu submitted the photo to Microsoft while the design team was developing Vista's wallpaper set during early 2006. This one was chosen, along with various other photos taken by other employees. He was paid US$1000, although he was not bothered by how much money he got paid and even claimed he would have done it for free. He also stated that the photo would be "immortal for the next decade". It is also possible that he submitted other photos to Microsoft for Vista, with the original filename SteveFu_2 hinting this was the second shot of his that was being considered.

Compared to the final wallpaper, the version in builds 5469 to 5840.16384 shows more rocks (with snow present) and trees on the right, as well as slightly more on the left. It appears that the final version was also slightly stretched out.

Alternate shots
There is also an alternate shot, which shows more of the rocks and trees on the left. This was included in a Softpedia article and was most likely sourced from his website, which is no longer online and the Internet Archive has been unable to archive the image files there.

In July 2009, Microsoft employee Bala Sivakumar, whose photography later featured in Windows 8, took a photo at the same location. He also took shots of his friend, Brandon Hoff, standing at the lake, although they were not posted online.