O'Rear credits that combination of camera and film for the success of the image. He stopped somewhere near the Napa–Sonoma county line and pulled off the road to set his Mamiya RZ67medium-format camera on a tripod, choosing Fujifilm's Velvia, a film often used among nature photographers and known to saturate some colors. 'There it was! My God, the grass is perfect! It's green! The sun is out there's some clouds,' he remembered thinking. Driving along the Sonoma Highway (California State Route 12 and 121) he saw the hill, free of the vineyards that normally covered the area they had been pulled out a few years earlier following a phylloxera infestation. He was particularly alert for a photo opportunity that day, since a storm had just passed over and other recent winter rains had left the area especially green. He was working with Irwin on a book about the wine country. Helena, California, in the Napa Valley north of San Francisco, to visit his girlfriend, Daphne Irwin (whom he later married), in the city, as he did every Friday afternoon. In January 1996, former National Geographic photographer Charles O'Rear was on his way from his home in St. The image would eventually be chosen as the default wallpaper, resulting in the company acquiring the image and renaming it to Bliss.ĭue to the marketing success of Windows XP, over the next decade it was claimed to be the most viewed photograph in the world during that time. Two years following the acquisition, Microsoft's design team selected images to be used as wallpapers in Windows XP. Westlight would be bought by Corbis in 1998, who digitized its best selling images. He sold it to Westlight for use as a stock photo titled Bucolic Green Hills.
While it was widely believed later that the image was digitally manipulated or even created with software such as Adobe Photoshop, O'Rear says it never was. Overview įormer National Geographic photographer Charles O'Rear, a resident of the nearby Napa Valley, took the photo on film with a medium-formatMamiya RZ67 camera while on his way to visit his girlfriend in 1996. It is estimated that billions of people have seen the picture, possibly making it the most viewed photograph in history. Charles O'Rear took the photo in 1996 and Microsoft bought the rights in 2000. It is a virtually unedited photograph of a green hill and blue sky with clouds in the Los CarnerosAmerican Viticultural Area of California's Wine Country.
Download now - 4500px x 3000px - A few versions of the Surface Pro X wallpaper designed to look like Windows XP's Bliss wallpaper.īliss is the default computer wallpaper of Microsoft's Windows XPoperating system. Downloads: 6,831 Comments: 1 Favorited: 14.
Windows XP Professional Uploaded by: Ryan666 Date Uploaded: 2/22/08 Resolution: 1024x768. Find Windows Xp pictures and Windows Xp photos on Desktop Nexus.