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Here’s The Hidden Story Behind the Iconic Windows Wallpaper


I am very sure that you remember the popular image of the blue sky and rolling green hill with cumulus and cirrus clouds. Actually, the image name is “Bliss”

Here’s The Hidden Story Behind the Iconic Windows Wallpaper

If you using the computer for a long period of time then you might be very known to the popular windows XP image of the blue sky and rolling green hill with cumulus and cirrus clouds. It was the default Windows XP Desktop background. However, the image is so crisp that most of Windows XP users assume that it was a photoshopped image.
The image was actually not Photoshopped! It had an awesome story behind it. So let’s know the entire story behind this cool Windows XP wallpaper “Bliss”

The Hidden Story Behind the Iconic Windows Wallpaper
The Hidden Story Behind the Iconic Windows Wallpaper

The Iconic Windows Wallpaper “Bliss” was actually taken by Charles O’Rear in the year 1996. He was once a photographer for National Geographic.

The Hidden Story Behind the Iconic Windows Wallpaper
The Hidden Story Behind the Iconic Windows Wallpaper

Charles O’Rear, a resident of the nearby Napa Valley, took the photo on film with a medium-format camera while he was driving through northern California’s wine growing territory. He was on the way to visit his girlfriend in 1996.

The Hidden Story Behind the Iconic Windows Wallpaper
The Hidden Story Behind the Iconic Windows Wallpaper

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.

The Hidden Story Behind the Iconic Windows Wallpaper
The Hidden Story Behind the Iconic Windows Wallpaper

Charles O’Rear submitted this photograph to Corbis, the stock photo and image licensing service founded by Bill Gates in 1989. Several years later, Microsoft engineers chose a digitized version of the image and licensed it from O’Rear when they were about to Launch Windows XP in 2001.
It is said that Charles O’Rear was paid with the largest amount ever paid for a single photograph.

The Hidden Story Behind the Iconic Windows Wallpaper
The Hidden Story Behind the Iconic Windows Wallpaper

This is how the place looked like when Simon Goldin clicks the image at the same spot 10 years later.
However, the saddest part is Microsoft had stopped giving support for Windows XP in 2014. Here’s the video made by Microsoft about Charles O’Rear and his famous photograph “Bliss”

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