Original Windows Xp Wallpaper Info

Then, Microsoft came calling. Microsoft’s art director was searching for "Pastoral landscapes without people." They found O’Rear’s hill. They wanted exclusivity—meaning no other company, ad agency, or calendar printer could ever use that hill again.

He didn't think much of it. He sent the roll of Fuji Velvia film to his lab, scanned the best shot, and uploaded it to a stock photo database called Westlight (later bought by Corbis).

In the early 2000s, fans began making pilgrimages to Sonoma, California, to find the exact GPS coordinates of the hill. They wanted to stand where O’Rear stood. But when they got there, they found a horror show for nostalgia.

O’Rear thought they were going to use it for a poster. Or a brochure. He had no idea they were going to staple it to the most popular operating system in the history of computing. When Windows XP launched on October 25, 2001, Bliss was everywhere. It was in schools, libraries, airport kiosks, grandma’s Dell, and the teenager’s gaming rig in the basement. original windows xp wallpaper

If you visit today, you can’t see the horizon. You see agriculture. The digital Eden has been reclaimed by the real world. Microsoft retired Bliss after Windows XP reached End of Life. But it never really left us. It’s the meme behind the "Clean your desktop" jokes. It’s the standard by which all default wallpapers are judged (and found wanting).

Charles O’Rear is 83 now. He still lives in Napa. He still shoots film. He laughs when people ask him if he’s sick of looking at the hill.

Close your eyes for a second. Picture the year 2002. You’re walking into a Circuit City or a CompUSA. The air smells like fresh inkjet paper and hot plastic. In front of you, stacked in rainbow-colored boxes, are the CDs for Windows XP. Then, Microsoft came calling

In January 1998 (four years before XP launched), O’Rear was driving from his home in St. Helena, California, to visit his girlfriend in Novato. He was on Highway 12, passing through the Sonoma Valley. It had rained the night before—a rare, heavy winter rain that washed the pollution out of the sky and turned the grass an almost radioactive shade of green.

Over the years, vintners planted grapevines up the side of the hill. The rolling green lawn is gone, replaced by rigid rows of chardonnay grapes. To make matters worse, a large "Beware of Cougar" sign now sits near the spot.

"I literally pulled over to the side of the road," O’Rear later recalled. "I had my camera in the trunk. I got out, walked about 50 feet up the hill, and took four shots." He didn't think much of it

But you don’t remember the box. You remember the image inside.

But for the rest of us, Bliss is more than a photo. It is a time capsule. It holds the sound of a dial-up modem handshake, the click of a CRT monitor power button, and the promise of a simpler, greener digital world.

The design team, led by Microsoft’s Creative Director, decided to ditch digital abstraction for analog reality. They hired a legendary nature photographer named .