This Is The Most Viewed Photograph In History - And The Story Behind It Is Fascinating
You may recognise this photo but can’t quite place where you saw it - but the chances are you stared it at every day for years.
The picture - known as ‘Bliss’ - was the default computer wallpaper of the Microsoft Windows XP operating system, and if you ever owned a PC over the past few years, then you will have seen it the first time you ever booted it up.
It is a fair estimate to say that upwards of a billion people have seen the picture, that is a
And while the idyllic countryside view with its lush green fields and brilliant blue skies may look like it’s been digitally enhanced or even a complete product of a talented Photoshopper, Bliss is anything but.
The man behind the shot is National Geographic photographer Charles O’Rear, who was taking a drive through the Napa Valley in San Francisco in 1996 to meet up with his girlfriend Daphne - who would later become his wife.
This was no one-off trip - O’Rear would drive this way from his home in Sonoma, California, every Friday but this day he was looking for a picture to include in a book he was working on about wine country.
Default: Bliss was the main wallpaper for anyone using Windows XP (YouTube)
Along the way he saw a stretch of field that had none of the usual vineyards and so he pulled over his car, to get a closer look.
He recalled: “I got out, took a couple of pictures, and kept on going. And the rest is history.”
And what a history that was - O’Rear had no idea at the time that his quick stop for a “couple of pictures” soon defined a whole era for computer owners.
As it happened, despite the striking and serene look Bliss never actually made it into O’Rear’s book so he instead made it available through Corbis, a stock photo company that photographers used to license their shots.
And it wasn’t until 2000 that Microsoft - whose chief executive Bill Gates happened to own Corbis - decided to get in touch with the photographer, telling him they wanted to pay him for the license to use the shot.
O’Rear said: “I have no idea what they were looking for.
”Were they looking for an image that was peaceful? Were they looking for an image that had no tension?”
Quick stop: Photographer Charles O’Rear captured the shot while on a drive (Wikipedia)
If that is what they were looking for, then they had certainly found it in Bliss, and the firm were so adamant about using the picture that they wanted to buy all the rights to use it - and not just for use as its default wallpaper.
O’Rear was reportedly paid one of the largest payments ever made to a photographer for a single image - though the exact figure has never been revealed as he signed a confidentiality agreement keeping the number a secret.
To give you an idea of how much money was involved, Microsoft wanted the original film sent to them but delivery companies refused to transport it as the value was more than their insurance would cover.
As a result, Microsoft instead bought a plane ticket to Seattle for O’Rear to personally hand deliver the film to them.
After that, the picture soon started to become instantly recognisable, used on Microsoft’s marketing for XP and every person - around a billion who bought the operating system - who switched on their brand new computer for the first time was faced with the picture perfect scene.
Microsoft XP was retired in 2014 and the picture still remains a part of popular culture - but what does the place where Bliss was taken look like today?
Bliss as it looks today: The scenery has changed over the past 20 years (Rex)
Located on Highway 12 in Sonoma County, photographers who have made pilgrimage to the area have found that the scenery that gave Bliss its name is no longer quite the way it used to be.
The lush green grass has been replaced by grape crop that is used to make the wine the Napa Valley is famous for.
Farm equipment, rosebushes and a house now make the area not quite as recognisable as the sight seen on millions of PCs since the early 2000s.
Sceptics who believe the original image has been altered or spliced together from several different photos have used the scenery based at the location today as proof.
However, O’Rear is adamant that his shot was not altered.
He maintained: “I didn’t ‘create’ this. I just happened to be there at the right moment and documented it.”
Sometimes you just can’t explain magic.
