The man responsible for the “most viewed photo ever” has told how he came across the famous “painting,” and that it was, at least in part, down to luck.
In an interview with People magazine, photographer Charles O’Rear explained that he always carries a camera with him because “you never know.” On that day in early 1996, O’Rear was driving from St. Helens, California, to Marin County to visit his now-wife, Daphne Larkin, when he stopped to take a photo.
“I would stop a lot to take pictures. I thought the scenery there was so beautiful,” he noted. The photo he took that January day became known as “Bliss” and gained fame as Microsoft’s desktop wallpaper.
Featuring lush green hills and a bright blue sky punctuated by fluffy white clouds, this vibrant image looks as if it has been Photoshopped. However, this was not the case. “When you shoot film, what you see is what you get,” explained Orer – the photographer who captured the image using a Mamiya RZ67 camera equipped with Fuji Film color film and a tripod.
“There was nothing unusual. I used a brighter colour film, which was Fuji Film at the time, and the RZ67 lenses were simply brilliant. “The size of the camera and the film together made a difference and I think it helped the photography look more like it was. I think if I had shot with 35mm it wouldn’t have had the same effect.”
Two years later, the Orris photo ended up in the hands of Microsoft founder Bill Gates after Gates’s Corbis Group bought the Westlight photography agency – Microsoft bought the photo for $100,000 and the rest is history.
Although the photographer spent more than two decades working for National Geographic, “Bliss” remains his most famous image. “When he dies, on his tombstone, we won’t say ‘National Geographic,’ we’ll say ‘Bliss Photographer,’” he revealed.
“The image is everywhere, as we all know. The image, no matter where we are in the world – India, Thailand, Greece – that image is always there, whether it’s on an old computer in a fancy hotel or we see that image on billboards, airplanes, in airports,” O’Rear noted, highlighting: “I have a theory that anyone over the age of 15 will remember that image for the rest of their life.”
