World's Most Viewed Photo of All Times Will Shock You

"A picture is better than a thousand words."

Ever wondered which photograph has the distinction of being the most viewed in the world? Who clicked it? How much did it cost?

Have you heard the name Charles O'Rear? He is the photographer of 'Bliss', the most viewed picture of all time - more than 1 billion people viewed his photo. And don't be surprised if you are one of them.

Bliss' is an image of a lush green hillside, partially lightened by bright sunshine. There's a clear-blue sky peppered with clouds.

It is familiar to perhaps billions of people worldwide because of being chosen as the default 'wallpaper' image in Microsoft's Windows XP program, launched in 2002.

Many have wondered if it's a real place or a computer-generated scene assembled in Photoshop from several different images? The answer is yes; Charles O'Rear clicked the picture in January 1998. At that time, O'Rear was a 56-year-old professional photographer.

He enjoyed photographing the lush landscape near his Napa Valley home, a place he had been visiting since 1978 after being sent there by National Geographic on an assignment to capture winemaking in Napa Valley, 50 miles north of San Francisco in California. O'Rear fell in love with the location and later went to live there permanently, settling in St Helena.

He also began to specialize in winemaking photography, initially concentrating on the vineyards in California but later on photographing wine production across the world.

While traveling through the town on one bright, partially cloudy winter morning, one hillside caught his eye while driving to Corte Madera. With the sun in the right position, the photo almost captured a dreamlike quality.

Since O'rear always carried a camera with him, he took the photo with a hand-held Mamiya RZ67 film medium-format camera on a tripod. He shot it on Fujifilm Velvia film, an emulsion known for its saturated color palate. After clicking the photo, he submitted it to Corbis picture library (owned by Microsoft chief executive Bill Gates) as a stock photo.

From here, Microsoft's software engineers chose the image as a default screen saver for the new Windows XP program, launched in 2002, and gave it the title 'Bliss.'

Microsoft made very few changes to the image. They cropped the shot on the left side of the frame and altered the color of the hillside to a much more vivid green.

The photograph became a part of every copy of Windows XP sold worldwide (installed on more than a billion computers) and a crucial part of its $200 million advertisement campaign.

As such, it was one of the most valuable images, and Microsoft paid O'Rear the second most fees ever for copyrighting a single photo. Although he's unable to reveal the exact sum for legal reasons, as per Petapixel reports, he was paid at least $100k for its use.

So why did Microsoft choose this image above others? The fact is that it's attractive, soft on the eye, and doesn't divert from other items that might be on the screen, are the contributing factors. One more reason is that it is an unusually inviting image of a verdurous landscape and promotes a sense of well-being to desk-bound computer users.

When an interviewer asked Charles O'Rear what it's like to have shot one of the world's most famous photographs. 'I feel proud to see the image still being used,' he said. 'Of course, when I took it, I had no idea it would be so famous. Mostly, I'm proud to point to the monitor and tell people that I live near where it was taken. I'm lucky to live in a blissful place.'

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