Bliss Turns 28 This Month

28 Years ago, on a Friday afternoon in January of 1996, (Coincidentally sharing the exact dates to January of 2024), on the way from his home in St Helena, CA to visit his girlfriend in San Francisco, accomplished National Geographic photographer and former reporter-photographer for the Kansas City Star, Charles O’Rear, briefly stopped alongside California Highway 12 near the town of Schellville. Seeing a large green hill, stripped free of its usual grape vines due to a fungal infestation years prior, he took 4 photos with his Mamiya RZ67 using Fuji Velvia 120 film before packing up into his truck and continuing on his way, later naming the images “Bucolic Green Hills”. Later on in the year 2000, Microsoft purchased the rights to the photographs from him outright. Afterwhich, the photos were valued so highly (Charles had signed an NDA preventing him from revealing the exact amount he was given.) that carriers such as UPS and FEDEX refused to ship the negatives, causing Microsoft to buy him a plane ticket to bring the negatives to them himself. Microsoft would slightly increase the saturation of one of the images, renaming it “Bliss”, where it would become the brand image and main default wallpaper for their upcoming OS, Windows XP. Due to the overall success of Windows XP for over a decade to come, Bliss would become one of, if not, the most viewed photographs of all time. The hill has since been replanted and is once more covered with grape vines, though fans of the image still go to recreate the iconic photo. In a 2014 interview with Microsoft Netherlands, Charles half-jokingly stated that although he worked for NatGeo for 25 years, Bliss will likely be the picture for which he is most remembered. Happy 28th birthday to the legendary Bliss photo and a late Happy Birthday to Charles O’Rear.