Corbis paid O’Rear a significant sum, but the details are legendary. Depending on the interview, the figure ranges from the "low six figures" to "just under $200,000." By stock photography standards in 1998, that was an absolute nuclear bomb of a payout.
The design team, led by Microsoft’s Creative Director, decided to ditch digital abstraction for analog reality. They hired a legendary nature photographer named .
The rolling green hills. The luminous blue sky dotted with cotton-ball clouds. The slight, almost impossible curve of the earth. It is the most viewed photograph in human history. It is Bliss . original windows xp wallpaper
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).
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. Corbis paid O’Rear a significant sum, but the
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.
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. They hired a legendary nature photographer named
So the next time you boot up a sterile, flat UI? Go ahead. Download the JPEG. Put it on your 4K monitor. It won’t fit perfectly. It will look a little soft. A little dated.
For four years, that photo sat in a database under the generic name: "Rolling Green Hills, California."