Who took this photo that everyone who uses Windows XP is very familiar with?

Born in 1941, American photographer Charles O'Rear has worked for the National Geographic magazine for 25 years, as well as working for daily newspapers such as The Emporia Newspaper and the Los Angeles Times. O'Rear, who started taking photographs in the field of winemaking in 1978, has photographed winemaking in Napa Valley and has gained a worldwide reputation. (He has nearly 10 books in this field.)

Charles O'Rear (born 26 November 1941) is an American photographer. His image Bliss was used as the default desktop wallpaper of Microsoft's Windows XP operating system. O'Rear started his career with the daily newspapers Emporia Gazette, The Kansas City Star, and Los Angeles Times; worked for National Geographic magazine; and was part of the Environmental Protection Agency's DOCUMERICA project. He began photographing winemaking in 1978.

His most important photograph was the photograph he named Bliss, which he saw and took while driving between California- Napa, and Sonoma. According to sources, the photo taken in 1996 was included in Windows with the likes of Bill Gates and was first seen on computer screens in 2002. The photograph, which was sold to the visual media company Corbis (the world's largest photo archive), was chosen by the owner of the company, Bill Gates, and wanted it to be added to XP because it gives freedom, calmness, peace, and warmth. Although it is sometimes claimed that the photo is a photoshopped, computer-generated scene, O'Rear denied this and reported that it was submitted to Corbis without any changes.

Charles O'Rear took this photo with a Mamiya RZ67 camera in Napa Valley in 1996 on his way to his girlfriend.

For this photo, Microsoft made O'Rear the second-largest payment to a photo in the history of photography.

O Rear wanted to ship the movie, but Microsoft refused. So, Microsoft bought O'Rear's round-trip flight ticket for this frame. “I had no idea exactly why the photograph would be used,” O’Rear said years later.

The photo has only a framing change: Microsoft cropped the image to the left of the frame and chose a more vibrant green slope color.