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Microsoft gave the photo its current name, and made it a key part of its marketing campaign for XP.
"I don't think the engineers or anybody at Microsoft had any idea it would have the success it's had."
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So the software company bought him a plane ticket to Seattle and he personally delivered it to their offices." "I had no idea where it was going to go," he said. It has been reported to be "in the low six figures." O'Rear needed to send Microsoft the original film and sign the paperwork however, when couriers and delivery services became aware of the value of the shipment, they declined since it was higher than their insurance would cover. They offered O'Rear what he says is the second-largest payment ever made to a photographer for a single image however, he signed a confidentiality agreement and cannot disclose the exact amount.
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Microsoft said they wanted not just to license the image for use as XP's default wallpaper, but to buy all the rights to it.
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"Were they looking for an image that was peaceful? Were they looking for an image that had no tension?" Another image of O'Rear's titled Full Moon over Red Dunes, known as Red moon desert in Windows XP, was also considered as the default wallpaper, but was changed due to testers comparing it to buttocks. "I have no idea what were looking for," he recalls. In 2000, Microsoft's Windows XP development team contacted O'Rear through Corbis, which he believes they used instead of larger competitor Getty Images, also based in Seattle, because the former company is owned by Microsoft founder Bill Gates. He also submitted a vertical shot, which was available at the same time. Since it was not pertinent to the wine-country book, O'Rear made it available through Westlight (transferred to Corbis after its acquisition) as a stock photo, available for use by any interested party willing to pay an appropriate licensing fee. According to O'Rear, the image was not digitally enhanced or manipulated in any way. "Everything was changing so quickly at that time." He took four shots and got back into his truck. "I think that if I had shot it with 35 mm, it would not have nearly the same effect." While he was setting up his camera, he said it was possible that the clouds in the picture came in. "It made the difference and, I think, helped the 'Bliss' photograph stand out even more," he said. 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 RZ67 medium-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.
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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. Microsoft chose the image because "it illustrates the experiences Microsoft strives to provide customers (freedom, possibility, calmness, warmth, etc.)." ĭue to the market success of Windows XP, over the next decade it was claimed to be the most viewed photograph in the world during that time. The image also became part of Microsoft's $200 million advertising campaign to promote their software, Yes You Can and has been the subject of many parodies. The image would eventually be chosen as the default wallpaper, resulting in the company acquiring the image and renaming it to Bliss. 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 manipulated or even created with software such as Adobe Photoshop, O'Rear says it never was. Former National Geographic photographer Charles O'Rear, a resident of the nearby Napa Valley, took the photo on film with a medium-format Mamiya RZ67 camera while on his way to visit his girlfriend in 1996.
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