Focus on Bliss (image) and explore the Reception.
O'Rear concedes that despite all the other photographs he took for National Geographic, he will probably be remembered most for Bliss. "Anybody now from age 15 on for the rest of their life will remember this photograph," he said in 2014.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, southeastern Washington and the south of Tübingen, Germany.
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.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 Corbis' minor alterations to the digitized version, he did nothing to it in a darkroom, contrasting it with Adams' Monolith: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.
In December 2001, Microsoft released a screensaver under the name of Bliss, with the scenery similar to the image, but with animating effects.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."On July 8, 2021, the Microsoft 365 team published a series of nostalgic themed Microsoft Teams backgrounds, that included a wallpaper based on the scenery of Bliss.
Ansel Adams Corbis Alentejo aesthetic Monolith burning and dodging darkroom Washington County Kerry Amateur Photographer Dutch Microsoft North Otago Portuguese digitized National Geographic Tübingen