Red moon desert

Red moon desert
Image information
Original title	Full Moon over Red Dunes
Licensed from	Corbis
Originates from	Corbis
Photographer	Charles O'Rear
Taken	c. 1998-1999
Location	Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, South Africa
License type	Royalty free
Windows information
Software	Windows XP
Type	Wallpaper
Original filename	OR006712
Resolution	800x600
File type	JPEG (.jpg)

Red moon desert, originally known as Full Moon over Red Dunes, is a wallpaper included in Windows XP, licensed from Corbis. It was taken by Charles O'Rear in the late 90s, who also took XP's iconic default wallpaper, Bliss. It depicts part of Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, South Africa at night, with the moon visible in the left corner. O'Rear also shot several photos of the same desert on the same photo shoot. The image also appears on a card in cards.dll.

People have observed that the moon appears to be upside down compared to what is seen in the Northern Hemisphere, giving rise to the possibility that it is a digital composite. However, O'Rear has never confirmed this. It is also worth noting that the moon is not upside down on images related to it, and the image as a whole is more saturated in appearance compared to the alternate shots.

History

After Westlight was acquired by Corbis in 1998, the company sent O'Rear around the world for a year to take photos of wine regions. During his time in South Africa, he also took several photos of the desert in Kalahari Gemsbok National Park at night. The ID of the photo when it was available on Corbis was OR006712, which is also revealed to be the image's original file name in the metadata.

In 2000, Microsoft licensed it for use in Windows XP, then codenamed Whistler. It was one of the first new wallpapers to be included with the operating system, along with Azul, Bliss, Follow (then titled Follow me), Moon flower, and Vortec space. It appeared as the default wallpaper from builds 2423 to 2464.

As the desert series of images were part of an assignment for the company, Corbis owned the rights to them until 2016, when its image licensing business was sold to Unity Glory, an affliate of Getty Images partner Visual China Group. They currently own the rights, and consequently none of these shots appear on his PhotoShelter, where he has made several of his own photos available for licensing. However, as all of the shots except the one used in XP were taken down, it is unclear who currently owns the rights to the other shots, although possibly still Unity Glory.

Usage as default wallpaper

According to Microsoft programmer Raymond Chen on his blog The Old New Thing, Red moon desert was originally intended to be XP's default wallpaper, but was allegedly changed due to some testers feeling it resembled a pair of buttocks, leading to O'Rear's other photo Bliss becoming the default wallpaper. While this wallpaper was temporarily set as the default wallpaper during Whistler, this story does not appear to be true; Bliss had already been selected based on extensive research by design manager Rob Girling and his team, and the Luna theme shares the same color scheme as the wallpaper. It is more likely the wallpaper was set to default as a decoy; the unleaked Lab06 build 2415 predates build 2423, and shows Bliss set as the wallpaper.

Alternate shots

Red moon desert is one of many desert shots taken by O'Rear in Kalahari Gemsbok National Park in the late 90s. It was part of a series of 12 images on Corbis of the same area; some of these are noticeably similar to the one included in XP, such as a vertical shot and a shot of the same spot with no moon present. However, they do not appear to be digital composites, as the moon is not upside down in any of them and the desert/sky is not as saturated. While this series was transferred to Getty Images, all of the rights-managed shots became restricted assets in January 2020 before being taken down in December 2020. Red moon desert, however, remains commercially available due to it being royalty free to begin with.

There were also alternate shots that were not submitted to Corbis at the time. Among these is one that takes place during daytime. This appears to be a digital composite, as the desert appears very similar to Red moon desert's, and the clouds have appeared in other digital composite photos O'Rear produced. There is also one that takes place during sunset, but this would have been taken in an earlier photoshoot as it originates from Westlight, meaning it was taken before 1998.

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  A vertical shot; notice how it appears less saturated, and the moon is not upside down.

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  A shot in roughly the same spot, albeit no moon is present

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  A vertical shot of a different angle of the desert

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  A digital composite of the same spot in daylight.

Names in other languages

This section is incomplete. If you have any other translations, please add them.

Language	Name	Translation
Arabic	صحراء مقمرة Ṣaḥrāʾ muqmara	Moonlit desert
Chinese Simplified	日落的沙漠 Rìluò de shāmò	Desert at sunset
Chinese Traditional	日落的沙漠	Desert at sunset
Czech	Měsíc nad pouští	The moon over the desert
Danish	Rødt ørkenlandskab	Red desert landscape
Dutch	Woestijn	Desert
French	Désert sous la lune	Desert under the moon
German	Wüstenmond	Moon desert
Greek	Πανσέληνος στην κόκκινη έρημο Pansélinos stin kókkini érimo	Full moon in the red desert
Hungarian	Vörös sivatag	Red desert
Italian	Deserto rosso	Red desert
Japanese	夕陽の砂丘 Yūhi no sakyū	Dunes of the setting sun
Korean	달과 붉은 사막 Dalgwa bulg-eun samag	Moon and red desert
Norwegian	Rød måne-ørken	Red moon desert
Polish	Czerwona pustynia	Red desert
Portuguese	Deserto vermelho	Red desert
Russian	Красная пустыня Krasnaja pustynja	Red desert
Spanish	Desierto rojo con luna	Red desert with moon
Swedish	Ökenmåne	Desert moon
Turkish	Kızıl çölde ay	Moon in the red desert
Romanian	Deșertul lună roșie	Red Moon desert

External links

• Getty Images page