Bliss

Bliss is the name of the default computer wallpaper for Microsoft's Windows XP operating system. It is a virtually unedited photograph of a green hill and blue sky with clouds in the Los Carneros American Viticultural Area of California's Wine Country. Former National Geographic photographer Charles O'Rear took the photo in January 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.

Former National Geographic photographer Charles O'Rear, a resident of the nearby Napa Valley, took the photo on film with a medium-format 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. He sold it to Corbis for use as a stock photo. Several years later, Microsoft engineers chose a digitized version of the image and licensed it from O'Rear.

Over the next decade it has been claimed to be the most viewed photograph in the world during that time.Since it was taken, the landscape in it has changed, with grapevines planted on the hill and field in the foreground, making O'Rear's image impossible to duplicate for the time being. That has not stopped other photographers from trying, and some of their attempts have been included in art exhibits.

Within 2019, the popularity grew with this picture as most people associate this picture with Windows XP memes.