This hill is ubiquitous, but surprisingly difficult to locate in reality.
The iconic standard Windows XP desktop wallpaper of a sloping green hill under a clear blue sky is one of the most viewed photos in the world, but its generic pleasantness has long kept Internet residents in the real world location – some believe it is not a real photo.
The editor-in-chief of SFGate recently tried to find the earthy subject of the computer background and discovered it covered with wine grapes, across the street from an alpaca farm and Highway 12 in Sonoma, California.
The photo even has an incredible backdrop: Charles O’Rear cut off the now legendary recording of ‘Bliss’ Hill while walking to his wife on Friday afternoon in January 1996.
“A majority of people who saw the photo, billions of people, thought it was not a real photo,” O’Rear said. ‘When we drive through the Sonoma hills in January, it always gets a matte green grass, it’s beautiful. I knew it, and it was just the perfect light, the perfect clouds. ”
O’Rear, 79, uploaded the photo to a stock photo agency. When Microsoft discovered the O’Rear recording, the company paid an unknown but allegedly six-figure amount for it forever, and immediately plastered it around the world as part of a $ 1 billion marketing campaign.
Despite O’Rear’s extensive photographic career recordings for the Los Angeles Times, The Kansas City Star and, for more than two decades, National Geographic, he is well aware that his ubiquitous image of the “Bliss” hill he remembers word.
“After 25 years of photography at National Geographic, Geographic will not be mentioned on my tombstone,” he told the publication.
Despite the ubiquity and fame that the image brought him, he says: “not a week goes by that an email about the photo appears” – because his legacy was linked to the technology company, it did not buy his loyalty do not have.
“I was addicted to Apple,” he said.
