The Story of the World's Most Famous Desktop Wallpaper

Windows XP has already retired, but its legacy still lives on. There are aspects of the operating system that remained hidden from users for years, and one of them is Bliss, the first desktop wallpaper you see after installation. Many believed it was a fictional creation, but its photographer, Charles O'Rear, tells us the true story of the image.

The change was significant. Moving from the generalized paleness of Windows 9x and Windows 2000 to the whirlwind of blue, silver, and pastel that Windows XP offered was a big step in improving the operating system's aesthetics, but there was something more than just colors. Upon finishing the installation, Windows XP presented this striking desktop wallpaper with a bright green meadow and clouds partially hiding an impressive blue sky.

The official name for the image is Bliss, or Happiness if you have a Spanish copy of XP. Dogs, houses, flowers, and dunes accompanied Bliss as alternatives, but nobody can deny that this green meadow traveled the entire planet. Bliss became the ultimate witness to the reach Windows XP had, and with at least a billion licenses sold, there's no doubt that Bliss is the most known and most viewed image in the world. Now, the question is: Where did it come from?

Charles O'Rear: The Photographer Behind Bliss

If anyone can answer that question precisely, it's professional photographer Charles O'Rear. His career took him to work for the Los Angeles Times and National Geographic magazine, but everything would change during January 1996. O'Rear lives in Napa Valley, north of San Francisco Bay. Since 1978, he dedicated himself to capturing images related to viticulture, and in that special month he knew there was a possibility of finding regions with a much more intense green on the grass, courtesy of local rains.

One Friday at noon, O'Rear was heading to visit his girlfriend when he 'encountered' Bliss. He took his Mamiya RZ67 camera and took the shot. The image ended up at the photography agency Corbis (whose owner was none other than Bill Gates), and that's where Microsoft discovered it. O'Rear had no idea about Microsoft's plans, but the Redmond giant had found what it wanted. It bought all intellectual rights to Bliss, including the original photograph, which had to be transported personally by O'Rear.

The final amount was never revealed (there's a confidentiality agreement), but the value was so high that no official courier wanted to handle the shipment, which is why O'Rear, with a ticket paid by Microsoft, had to carry the original photograph.

In the interview, the photographer also explains that several years after the release of Windows XP, a team of engineers sent him an email asking about the origin of Bliss. Many believed it was a Photoshop job, while others placed it near the company's headquarters in Seattle. O'Rear indicated the real location (technically alongside State Route 12 in Sonoma County), and to this day he insists that it received no post-processing whatsoever. As a comic touch, O'Rear hoped to sell another image to Microsoft before the release of Windows 8, but the phone 'never rang'.