The wonderful view from the Montparnasse tower, is one of the best that can be obtained from Paris. I took the picture in very bad conditions, very windy and no tripod, and a huge windows obstructing the view. Despite not being the most sharp picture ever taken, I thought it was a good wallpaper anyway!

Canon EOS 500D, 18-55mm kit lens.

Location: 48.842583, 2.321767

The highlight of 2012 for me was this amazing trip I did with my Dad. Such good memories and lots of photographs. This one has a classic postcard feel to it, yet it was right in front of my eyes! I didn't shoot any raw pictures since I feared I would need all my memory for the trip, yet the quality of this one is good so I have to share it.

Adobe Photoshop CS5.

Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM.

Photo Settings: 70mm, f/5, 1/1000 second, ISO 400.

I shot this last summer in Bremanger during my trip to Norway. The location is fairly close to the beach where I shot my other photo "Light Blue Night". This is a bit further out to sea, closer to the edge of the mountain to the right.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4, Adobe Photoshop CS5.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM.

Photo Settings: 24mm, f/9, 30 seconds, ISO 100.

Had to wake up really early at 6:00 AM to catch this one.

Didn't regret it. The sunlight was amazing!

Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Canon EF 135mm f/2L USM.

Photo Settings: 135mm, f/4, 1/200 second, ISO 400.

Taken at Ke'e beach on the island of Kauai, Hawaii. This is the beach where the road dead-ends on the north shore and you can only continue by foot for the next eleven and a half miles.

Nikon D700, Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 16-35mm f/4G ED VR.

Photo Settings: 17mm, f/11, 1/4 second, ISO 200.

...at the end of this continuous shadow. The rainforest between Sintra and Cascais, Portugal.

Tripod, Adobe Camera RAW & Photoshop

Copyright 2013 Sven Muller. All rights reserved.

Canon EOS Rebel XS, Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM.

Photo Settings: 17mm, f/9, 1 second, ISO 100.

The second of three images of ESO's GigaGalaxy Zoom project is a new and wonderful 340 megapixel vista of the central parts of our galactic home, a 34 by 20-degree wide image that provides us with a view as experienced by amateur astronomers around the world. Taken by Stephane Guisard, an ESO engineer and world-renowned astrophotographer, from Cerro Paranal, home of ESO's Very Large Telescope, this image directly benefits from the quality of Paranal's sky, one of the best on the planet. The image shows the region spanning the sky from the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer) to Scorpius (the Scorpion). The very colourful Rho Ophiuchi and Antares region features prominently to the right, as well as much darker areas, such as the Pipe and Snake Nebulae. The dusty lane of our Milky Way runs obliquely through the image, dotted with remarkable bright, reddish nebulae, such as the Lagoon and the Trifid Nebulae, as well as NGC 6357 and NGC 6334. This dark lane also hosts the very centre of our Galaxy, where a supermassive black hole is lurking.

The image was obtained by observing with a 10-cm Takahashi FSQ106Ed f/3.6 telescope and a SBIG STL CCD camera, using a NJP160 mount. Images were collected through three different filters (B, V and R) and then stitched together. This mosaic was assembled from 52 different sky fields made from about 1200 individual images totaling 200 hours exposure time, with the final image having a size of 24,403 x 13,973 pixels. Note that the final, full resolution image is only available through Stephane Guisard.

Credit: ESO/S. Guisard (www.eso.org/~sguisard)

Minimalistic wallpaper for neatness and tidiness.

Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop.

ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA.
Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit

This wide-field view of the Orion Nebula (Messier 42), lying about 1350 light-years from Earth, was taken with the VISTA infrared survey telescope at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile. The new telescope's huge field of view allows the whole nebula and its surroundings to be imaged in a single picture and its infrared vision also means that it can peer deep into the normally hidden dusty regions and reveal the curious antics of the very active young stars buried there. This image was created from images taken through Z, J and Ks filters in the near-infrared part of the spectrum. The exposure times were ten minutes per filter. The image covers a region of sky about one degree by 1.5 degrees.

Full press release: http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1006/

Original image: http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1006a/

A 9-exposure HDR panorama of the Monaco Yacht Show 2012 shot during twilight before sunrise.

Photomatix, Adobe Photoshop.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM.