- World Most Famous Wallpapers #N2O78QH (400x300 px)
- World Most Famous Wallpapers #3B8E29Z (1200x750 px)
- wi.82: World Most Famous Wallpapers (1920x1200 px)
- 1600x1000 1760 352 8 586
- World Most Famous Wallpapers #PSJZ341, W.Impex
- 1920x1080 1050 66 6 289
- World Most Famous Wallpapers-IAPZ292.jpg
- World Most Famous Wallpapers (1920x1200 px, 0.3 Mb)
- 400x300 1142 64 4 446
- #ISAMO4W World Most Famous Wallpapers 640x480 px
- 1024x768 884 27 4 310
- World Most Famous Wallpapers #GT2F21N (1024x576 px)
- 6000x4000 917 25 4 268
- World Most Famous Wallpapers (800x600, 96.59 Kb)
- 1920x1080 1078 44 5 258
- World Most Famous Wallpapers #Y6IPC55
- 1280x1024 1103 37 8 424
- World Most Famous Wallpapers - W.Impex
- 1920x1080 1281 81 8 343
- #T279K8A World Most Famous Wallpapers 700x437 px
- 2560x1440 1405 37 6 435
- #3UYN71N World Most Famous Wallpapers 1920x1200 px
- 6000x3750 1904 46 10 525
- wi.14: World Most Famous Wallpapers (701x525)
- 236x177 1602 229 7 360
- World Most Famous Wallpapers #R52781U, 153.38 Kb
- 800x500 1520 47 7 302
- World Most Famous Wallpapers #83ES31E, 0.1 Mb
GetWallpapers is one of the most popular wallpaper community on the Internet. We carefully pick the best background images for different resolutions (1920x1080, iPhone 5,6,7,8,X, Full HD, uHQ, Samsung Galaxy S5, S6, S7, S8, 1600x900, 1080p, etc).
Microsoft wants to make sure you remember the famous image of the blue sky and rolling pasture that graced so many computer screens for so long.
As the world mourns (or not) the end of the road for Windows XP—as of Tuesday, Microsoft is no longer offering support for the operating system—Microsoft Netherlands has posted this nine-minute film on its YouTube channel about XP's famous default wallpaper.
The backstory is told by Charles O'Rear, the photographer who snapped the iconic picture, aptly titled 'Bliss,' in 1996 along a California highway north of San Francisco (reports seem to differ on whether it's Napa or Sonoma).
The video is a bit slow moving, but is worth watching mostly because of O'Rear's amusement at having stumbled, quite literally, into the background of history, and because of the irony that the photo was, contrary to much speculation, shot on the kind of analog film that digital has rendered obsolete (though Microsoft ultimately cropped the shot and pumped up the greens before presenting it to users).
Notably absent is any specific discussion of how much Microsoft originally paid O'Rear for the rights to an image that this video touts as perhaps the most viewed in history. O'Rear does point out that the original print was valued too highly for regular shipping services like FedEx to be willing carry it … but the courier's current maximum declared value for packages containing photos clocks in at a whopping $1,000, not counting for inflation.
O'Rear has said in other interviews that the fee was the most he, previously a photographer for National Geographic, ever received for a photograph, and one of the largest amounts ever paid for a single shot.
Regardless, the fact is, the use of the photo was marketing genius, as it projects natural serenity in a totally generic kind of way. (Guesses as to its provenance ranged over the years from New Zealand to Ireland to Washington state.)
Still, as inoffensive—pleasant, even—as it is to look at, it's memorable mostly because it couldn't be avoided. So, while Microsoft deserves credit for having some fun with the news that it's retiring an era-defining product, it's also hard not to interpret it all as a legacy technology company lamenting its once-great history as its modern significance has waned.
Via Devour.