Although O'Rear denied the claim and reported that it was submitted to Westlight without making any change to it, a thumbnail of Bliss from Corbis Westlight Creative Freedom, a CD-ROM consisting of rights-managed stock photography, shows that the version Microsoft purchased from Corbis was already slightly cropped on the left, while the notably saturated appearance is a result of him using Fujifilm's Velvia film, rather than being an alteration made by Westlight or Microsoft. The image was alleged to have been digitally manipulated to enhance its effects or even to have been a computer-generated scene, assembled using Adobe Photoshop from a number of different images. As a result of the success of the operating system, O'Rear's photograph became one of the most viewed images in history. The image also became part of Microsoft's $200 million advertising campaign to promote their software, Yes You Can.
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Microsoft renamed the image to Bliss and used it as the default desktop wallpaper for Windows XP's default theme. Microsoft bought him a plane ticket to Seattle and he personally delivered the original film to their offices, as couriers and delivery services declined to ship it after becoming aware of the value of the shipment. It has been reported to be "in the low six figures". 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. Microsoft picked O'Rear's image for its new operating system Windows XP in 2001, buying all rights to it. Westlight would be acquired by Corbis in 1998, one of the stock photography agencies that Microsoft used at the time. He submitted the photo to Westlight under the name of Bucolic Green Hills. O'Rear took the photograph with a hand-held medium-format Mamiya RZ67 camera. ĭriving through Napa and Sonoma counties in California, he stopped and pulled off the road to photograph a green, lush hillside on the side of the highway 12/ 121. He was working with Irwin on a book about the wine country. Helena, California, in the Napa Valley, to visit his girlfriend, Daphne Irwin (whom he later married), in the city, as he did every Friday afternoon. In January 1996, O'Rear was on his way from his home in St. It is probably the most recognized photo on the planet. I had no idea when I took the photograph that anything like that could happen. I just happened to be there at the right moment and documented it. Photographers like to become famous for pictures they created, I didn't 'create' this. The same year, Corbis sent O'Rear around the world for a year to photograph major wine regions. In 1980, he co-founded the photo agency, Westlight, with Craig Aurness, which was acquired in 1998 by Corbis. O'Rear is credited with the most photographs in the final DOCUMERICA collection. įrom 1972 to 1975, O'Rear was part of the Environmental Protection Agency's DOCUMERICA project, aimed at "photographically documenting the subjects of environmental concern in America during the 1970s" along with 70 other photographers including Bill Strode, Danny Lyon and John H. While working with National Geographic, he learned to use small strobes and taught the subject for 11 years at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshop. For the magazine, he photographed 25 articles ranging in topics including the Mexican Riviera, Siberia, Canada, Silicon Valley and Napa Valley. O'Rear had been associated with the magazine for nearly 25 years (1971 to 1995) and has photographed in 30 countries and every state in the USA. O'Rear has appeared on National Geographic magazine's cover twice: once as "Bird Man" flying an ultralight aircraft and later for the other photograph shown him holding a computer chip in his hand.
In 1985, he traveled to Indonesia for another assignment for the magazine where he carried 500 rolls of film and took 15,000 photos. O'Rear became interested in wine photography and shifted his base to the valley to photograph the region.
In 1978, the magazine sent him to Napa Valley to photograph the wine region. In 1971, National Geographic magazine hired O'Rear to document the lives of Russian villagers in Alaska who called themselves Old Believers. In 1961, he joined the daily newspaper Emporia Gazette as a photographer, and in 1962 The Kansas City Star as a reporter-photographer and, in 1966, he moved to Los Angeles to join as a staff photographer for the Los Angeles Times. He attended State Teachers College and started his career as a sports reporter for the Butler Daily Democrat.
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As a child, he wanted to be a pilot and got his license at the age of 16. O'Rear was born in Butler, Missouri in 1941 and first handled a Brownie camera when he was 10.
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