It became the single most viewed photograph in history, estimated to have been seen by over a billion people .
The design team, led by Microsoft’s Creative Director, decided to ditch digital abstraction for analog reality. They hired a legendary nature photographer named .
If that name sounds familiar, it’s because O’Rear didn't shoot stock photos in a studio. He was the guy National Geographic sent to photograph the vineyards of Napa and the sand dunes of the Sahara. He shot film. Big, medium-format film. The story of the photo is pure serendipity. original windows xp wallpaper
And it wasn’t rendered in a computer. It was real. By the late 1990s, computer interfaces were ugly. They were beige, boxy, and filled with dreary teal backgrounds (looking at you, Active Desktop). When Microsoft set out to build Windows XP, codenamed "Whistler," they wanted a radical shift. They wanted "human." They wanted "joy."
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. It became the single most viewed photograph in
And it will still be the most beautiful desktop you’ve ever had.
"Not at all," he says. "That photograph paid for my house." If that name sounds familiar, it’s because O’Rear
But you don’t remember the box. You remember the image inside.