Windows Xp Background

18张Windows XP高清壁纸和桌面背景。您可在所有设备上免费下载：电脑、平板和智能手机。 - Wallpaper Abyss.

The Windows XP wallpaper, known to everyone as Bliss, is without a doubt the most famous desktop background that ever got to see daylight, and this is mostly the result of how successful the operating system turned out to be.

And while many people know how the wallpaper eventually became so popular, the untold story of Bliss includes a plethora of captivating details proving that choosing a new desktop wallpaper for the world's number one PC operating system isn't just happening overnight.

Bliss is the creation of photographer Charles 'Chuck' O'Rear, who took the picture in 1996 when he was driving down Highway 121 in the Napa Valley wine region. The photo in question was a medium format film negative that O'Rear shot with a Mamiya RZ67 on a tripod and Fujifilm Velvia film.

The photo itself was uploaded to Corbis, a digital image service (more like stock photo websites) that Bill Gates himself founded, and was picked by Microsoft in 2000 as the default wallpaper for Windows XP.

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The shipping adventure

Choosing the new Windows XP background, however, wasn't an easy thing to do. Microsoft employees started looking for photos and eventually decided to stick with Bliss, though getting their hands on the actual image was a more complex process than initially thought.

Windows Xp Background Meme

The software giant purchased not only the rights to use the photo as the desktop background in Windows XP, but also the slide it was originally captured on, so Microsoft requested the photographer to deliver the film as well. This proved to be more complicated that it seemed to be given how much Microsoft paid for the photo. Although no specifics were provided, it's believed the price was somewhere in the low six figures, so shipping the photo and the slide required a very expensive insurance.

Microsoft asked O'Rear to sign a confidentiality agreement to prevent him from disclosing how much money he received for the photo, but it's believed this was the second-largest payment ever made to a photographer for a single image.

No digital retouches

Seiki 720t vinyl cutter software. The actual photo that Microsoft used was a scanned version, and although you'd think it would've been easier for O'Rear to simply professionally drum scan the image and email it to the company, that wasn't possible given the technology available at that time. Doing this would have generated a huge image file with a size of several gigabytes, and by having the photographer travel in person to their office, Microsoft picked the most convenient and cost-effect option.

For people wondering whether Microsoft Photoshopped the photo or not, the Bliss wallpaper is nothing more than the original picture as O'Rear took it, with no refinements whatsoever. Microsoft said that it darkened the green hill a little bit, but other than that, no edits have been made.

The choice of gear, however, is believed to have contributed to the colors in the wallpaper, as the Fujifilm Velvia itself is known as a film that can help oversaturate some colors.

'It made the difference and, I think, helped the 'Bliss' photograph stand out even more,' the photographer himself explained. 'I think that if I had shot it with 35 mm, it would not have nearly the same effect.'

For anyone looking for more information on the location where Bliss was shot, here you go.

Bliss is the default computer wallpaper of Microsoft's Windows XPoperating system. It is a virtually unedited photograph of a green hill and blue sky with clouds in the Los CarnerosAmerican Viticultural Area of California's Wine Country. Charles O'Rear took the photo in 1996 and Microsoft bought the rights in 2000. It is estimated that billions of people have seen the picture, possibly making it the most viewed photograph in history.^[1]

Overview[edit]

Former National Geographic photographer Charles O'Rear, a resident of the nearby Napa Valley, took the photo on film with a medium-formatMamiya RZ67 camera while on his way to visit his girlfriend in 1996. While it was widely believed later that the image was digitally manipulated or even created with software such as Adobe Photoshop, O'Rear says it never was.^[2][3] He sold it to Westlight for use as a stock photo titled Bucolic Green Hills.^[4] Westlight would be bought by Corbis in 1998, who digitized its best selling images.^[5] Two years following the acquisition, Microsoft's design team selected images to be used as wallpapers in Windows XP. The image would eventually be chosen as the default wallpaper, resulting in the company acquiring the image and renaming it to Bliss.

Due to the marketing success of Windows XP,^[6][7][8] over the next decade it was claimed to be the most viewed photograph in the world during that time.^[1]

History[edit]

Battle realms 2 free full version. In January 1996, former National Geographic photographer Charles O'Rear was on his way from his home in St. Helena, California, in the Napa Valley north of San Francisco, to visit his girlfriend, Daphne Irwin (whom he later married), in the city, as he did every Friday afternoon. He was working with Irwin on a book about the wine country. He was particularly alert for a photo opportunity that day, since a storm had just passed over and other recent winter rains had left the area especially green.^[9] Driving along the Sonoma Highway (California State Route 12 and 121) he saw the hill, free of the vineyards that normally covered the area; they had been pulled out a few years earlier following a phylloxera infestation.^[10] 'There it was! My God, the grass is perfect! It's green! The sun is out; there's some clouds,' he remembered thinking. He stopped somewhere near the Napa–Sonoma county line and pulled off the road to set his Mamiya RZ67medium-format camera on a tripod, choosing Fujifilm's Velvia, a film often used among nature photographers and known to saturate some colors.^[2][11] O'Rear credits that combination of camera and film for the success of the image. 'It made the difference and, I think, helped the 'Bliss' photograph stand out even more,' he said. 'I think that if I had shot it with 35 mm, it would not have nearly the same effect.'^[12] While he was setting up his camera, he said it was possible that the clouds in the picture came in. 'Everything was changing so quickly at that time.' He took four shots and got back into his truck.^[9][13] According to O'Rear, the image was not digitally enhanced or manipulated in any way.^[14]

Since it was not pertinent to the wine-country book, O'Rear made it available through Westlight (transferred to Corbis after its acquisition) as a stock photo, available for use by any interested party willing to pay an appropriate licensing fee.^[2] He also submitted a vertical shot, which was available at the same time.^[15] In 2000, Microsoft's Windows XP development team contacted O'Rear through Corbis, which he believes they used instead of larger competitor Getty Images, also based in Seattle, because the former company is owned by Microsoft founder Bill Gates.^[16] 'I have no idea what [they] were looking for,' he recalls. 'Were they looking for an image that was peaceful? Were they looking for an image that had no tension?'^[17] Another image of O'Rear's titled Full Moon over Red Dunes, known as Red moon desert in Windows XP, was also considered as the default wallpaper, but was changed due to testers comparing it to buttocks.^[18]

Microsoft said they wanted not just to license the image for use as XP's default wallpaper, but to buy all the rights to it. They offered O'Rear what he says is the second-largest payment ever made to a photographer for a single image; however, he signed a confidentiality agreement and cannot disclose the exact amount.^[19] It has been reported to be 'in the low six figures.'^[1] O'Rear needed to send Microsoft the original film and sign the paperwork; however, when couriers and delivery services became aware of the value of the shipment, they declined since it was higher than their insurance would cover. So the software company bought him a plane ticket to Seattle and he personally delivered it to their offices.'^[1] 'I had no idea where it was going to go,' he said. 'I don't think the engineers or anybody at Microsoft had any idea it would have the success it's had.'^[20]

Microsoft gave the photo its current name, and made it a key part of its marketing campaign for XP. Although it's often said that it was cropped slightly to the left and the greens were made slightly stronger, the version Microsoft bought from Corbis had been cropped like this to begin with,^[15] while the saturation is a result of the Velvia film. The photographer estimates that the image has been seen on a billion computers worldwide, based on the number of copies of XP sold since then.^[19]

Attempts to recreate[edit]

In November 2006, Goldin+Senneby visited the site in Sonoma Valley where the Bliss image was taken, re-photographing the same view now full of grapevines (pictured). Their work After Microsoft^[10] was first shown in the exhibition 'Paris was Yesterday' at the gallery La Vitrine in April 2007.^[21] It was later exhibited at 300m³ in Gothenburg.^[22]

Reception[edit]

O'Rear concedes that despite all the other photographs he took for National Geographic, he will probably be remembered most for Bliss.^[19] 'Anybody now from age 15 on for the rest of their life will remember this photograph,' he said in 2014.^[23]

Since the origins of the image were not widely known for several years after XP's release, there had been considerable speculation about where the landscape was. Some guesses have included locations in France, England, Switzerland, the North Otago region of New Zealand, and southeastern Washington.^[19] Dutch users believed the photograph was shot in Ireland's County Kerry since the image was named 'Ireland' in the Dutch release of the software; similarly, the image was named 'Alentejo' in the Portuguese version, leading users speaking that language to believe it had been taken in the eponymous region of Portugal.^[14]

Other users have speculated that the image was not of a real location, that the sky came from a separate image and was spliced together with the hill. O'Rear is adamant that, other than Microsoft's minor alterations to the digitized version, he did nothing to it in a darkroom, contrasting it with Adams' Monolith:

Windows Xp Background

I didn't 'create' this. I just happened to be there at the right moment and documented it. If you are Ansel Adams and you take a particular picture of Half Dome and want the light a certain way, you manipulate the light. He was famous for going into the darkroom and burning and dodging. Well, this is none of that.^[19]

In December 2001, Microsoft released a screensaver under the name of Bliss, with the scenery similar to the image, but with animating effects.^[24]

In 2012, David Clark of the British magazine Amateur Photographer commented on Bliss's aesthetic qualities. 'Critics might argue that the image is bland and lacks a point of interest, while supporters would say that its evocation of a bright, clear day in a beautiful landscape is itself the subject,' he wrote. He notes the 'dreamlike quality' created by the filtered sunlight on the hillside as distinguishing the image. 'What made Microsoft choose the image above all others?' he asked. Although the company had never told O'Rear or anyone else, Clark thought he could guess. 'It's attractive, easy on the eye and doesn't detract from other items that might be on the screen are all contributing factors. It may also have been chosen because it's an unusually inviting image of a verdant landscape and one that promotes a sense of wellbeing in desk-bound computer users.'^[25]

Windows Xp Background Location

See also[edit]

All Windows Xp Wallpapers

References[edit]

1. ^ ^abcdSweeney, Cynthia (March 26, 2014). 'Say goodbye to 'Bliss''. St. Helena Star. Retrieved April 12, 2014.
2. ^ ^abcTaylor, Victoria (April 12, 2014). 'The story behind the famous Windows XP 'Bliss' wallpaper'. New York Daily News. Retrieved April 12, 2014.
3. ^Heisler, Yoni (July 23, 2015). 'The most viewed photo in the history of the world'. BGR. Retrieved July 15, 2018.
4. ^Metadata of Bliss, Windows XP Beta 2
5. ^Pickerell, Jim (May 20, 1998). 'Corbis Acquires Westlight'. Selling Stock. Retrieved February 23, 2020.
6. ^Clark, David. 'Bliss by Charles O'Rear: Iconic Photograph'. Amateur Photographer. Retrieved May 12, 2013.
7. ^'Charles O'Rear's 'Bliss' one of the most viewed photo of all time'. Yahoo! News. July 18, 2012. Retrieved May 12, 2013.
8. ^Messieh, Nancy (August 28, 2011). 'Ever wonder where the Windows XP default wallpaper came from?'. The Next Web. Retrieved May 12, 2013.
9. ^ ^abThe story behind the wallpaper we'll never forget (Internet video). Microsoft NL. 2014. Event occurs at 1:10. Retrieved April 17, 2014.
10. ^ ^ab'After Microsoft'. Goldin+Senneby. April 5, 2007. Archived from the original on February 20, 2014. Retrieved February 15, 2010.
11. ^Story, at 2:30.
12. ^Story, at 2:50.
13. ^Freedman, Wayne (April 7, 2014). 'Windows XP background is photo of Sonoma hillside'. ABC7. Archived from the original on April 12, 2014. Retrieved April 12, 2014.
14. ^ ^abMessieh, Nancy (August 28, 2011). 'Ever wonder where the Windows XP default wallpaper came from?'. thenextweb.com. Retrieved September 19, 2012.
15. ^ ^abCorbis Westlight Creative Freedom (CD-ROM). Corbis. 1998.
16. ^Popa, Bogdan (April 11, 2014). 'Microsoft Creates Short Documentary About Windows XP 'Bliss' Wallpaper'. Softpedia. Retrieved April 17, 2014.
17. ^Story, at 3:20.
18. ^Chen, Raymond (August 25, 2003). 'Windows brings out the Rorschach test in everyone'. Microsoft - The Old New Thing. Retrieved February 28, 2020.
19. ^ ^abcdeYounger, Carolyn (January 18, 2010). 'Windows XP desktop screen is a Napa image'. Napa Valley Register. Retrieved January 18, 2010.
20. ^Story, at 4:45.
21. ^'Paris was Yesterday'. Hanne's Art and Culture Blog. Hanne Mugaas. April 2, 2007. Archived from the original on December 1, 2011. Retrieved February 15, 2010.
22. ^'300m³ Art Space – History'. 300m3.com. 2010. Archived from the original on June 23, 2012. Retrieved August 30, 2011.
23. ^Story, 5:30.
24. ^'Windows XP Bliss Screen Saver'. Microsoft. December 12, 2001. Archived from the original on December 27, 2001. Retrieved August 24, 2019.
25. ^Clark, David (May 28, 2012). 'Bliss by Charles O'Rear-Iconic Photograph'. Amateur Photographer. Retrieved April 20, 2014.

External links[edit]

Windows Xp Background Images

Windows Xp Background Now