Tell us about it.’ I wrote back and said, ‘Sorry, it’s the real deal. Some of us think it was taken out in eastern Washington in the Palouse area. “I got an email from someone at Microsoft-I suspect it was the engineering department-saying, ‘We have a contest going about that photograph,’” O’Rear said. And, most likely, “Bliss” will remain his most famous work forever. But “Bliss” remains his most famous work. He shot photos for other stories on advanced materials, as well as a coffee table book on Silicon Valley. It’s his hand, he said, holding a Motorola 68000 chip on the cover of the Oct. He helped pioneer National Geographic’s technology coverage. O’Rear himself has his own, separate technology connections. “Sorry, everybody, it’s the real deal,” he said. O’Rear swears the original Bliss photo appears as his camera caught it. But as you already know from the drive, those green vistas are just a few hundred yards away. Unfortunately, the presence of farm equipment-and a house that has been built onto the back side of the hill-robs the new “Bliss” view of its natural beauty. And the grapes used to make them.The only grasses are those at the bottom of a steep embankment, growing next to rosebushes that are being established next to the fence. What you’ll quickly discover, however, is that the verdant green hills have given way to the region’s cash crop: wine. As you’ll see in my photos, I never quite found a way to eliminate the ridge in the background. You’ve been warned.Īt the bottom of the hill, you’ll need to walk back and forth until you find the right vantage point. Then carefully walk back a quarter mile or so, crossing the highway only when no cars are coming. But an alternative is to find a place to turn around, then park next to a call box while driving east to Sonoma. The safest way to visit the spot is to find a spot in town to park, then hike back. If you’re driving from Napa to Sonoma, it’s little more than a mile or so past the magnificent Domaine Carneros. Since then, the location of the “Bliss” photo has been disclosed: about here, on Highway 12 (overlapping with Hwy 121) in Sonoma County. O’Rear can’t disclose the amount, but he said it would be an acceptable amount back then-and remains so today. But what he did do was hop on an airplane with the original transparency and accept a hefty check for his work.
“How many pictures they looked at, I have no idea,” O’Rear said.
And Corbis was owned by Microsoft’s chief executive at the time, Bill Gates. O’Rear was one of the first photographers to use a service called Corbis to digitise and licence his photos.
#WINDOWS XP BACKGROUND PHOTOGRAPHER WINDOWS#
The company had designed the new operating system with the stability of its corporate OS, Windows 2000, and the consumer features of Windows 98 and Windows ME. Microsoft was about to launch Windows XP. “And the rest is history.”įast-forward to the year 2000. “I got out, took a couple of pictures, and kept on going,” he told PCWorld in an interview on Monday. And in 1998, when O’Rear took his famous “Bliss” photo, all he could see was an emerald-green hill, a ridge behind it, and a few puffy clouds. At the bottom of a steep embankment is a barbed-wire fence. That stretch of Highway 12 is narrow and windy, with only a slender shoulder for stopping one’s car. O’Rear, a 25-year veteran of National Geographic, drove down the road, then pulled over. In January, as most California natives know, the rains come, and the hills explode into green for a few months before the withering summer heat browns them once again. His mission was to meet Daphne, the woman who eventually became his wife. In 1998, photographer Charles “Chuck” O’Rear was driving from Sonoma County through Napa on his way to Marin County. Credit: PCWorld Windows XP desktop, with the “Bliss” image in the background