The unretouched curves of WinXP's most famous wallpaper

If you think the default Windows XP wallpaper is a product of digital manipulation by a professional artist, think again: those curves are completely unretouched. The image, touted as one of the world's most distributed photos of all time, was apparently taken by American photographer Charles O'Rear in 1996 in somewhere in the US. Dutch photographer Jan Willem van Wessel shared in a blog post that the photo, officially titled "Bliss," was originally thought to be taken somewhere in Europe, as the Dutch version of the operating system labeled it as "Ireland." "The photo was not taken in Ireland, but in Napa Valley, California, USA, near the residence of O'Rear, who, as you know by now, is indeed born American," van Wessel wrote in Dutch.

After Microsoft Van Wessel also posted an "after" photo of the scenery, taken by artists Simon Goldin and Jakob Senneby about 10 years after the first photo, showing a forlorn view of dark skies hovering over wilted rows of vines. "Not only were [the photo showed a] different weather [condition] than the original picture, now the ground was converted into a vineyard," he said. In the artists' official webpage, Goldbin and Senneby, who mounted the photo as part of an exhibit and called it "After Microsoft," narrated how the new conditions came to be. "With property prices in Sonoma reaching $75,000 per acre for bare land, most hills were being developed into vineyards or homes," the two wrote. "On this hill grapevines had been planted. But in the early 90’s a Phylloxera bug infested the grapes and made them unusable. The entire vineyard had to be pulled out. For a few years the hill was covered with grass. Green at the time of the photograph," they explained. By the time the image was purchased by Microsoft, the infestation had been well taken care of and grapes were once again planted on the hills, they added. Recapturing the image But a cursory search on the Web of the depicted area in the photo showed that once in a while, the lush green color of the hills and the bright blue hue of the sky would reunite and re-create the famous lansdscape, just like what photographer Tony Immoos captured in 2010. "My first attempt to capture bliss in March was stymied by boring gray skies which left me shooting other things with better skies," Immoos wrote on his Flickr page. By May, Immoos, who told GMA News Online that he lived near the site, walked back to the location, parked his car at a nearby house and walked 160 meters to the spot to take the shot that closely resembles the 1996 photograph. Immoos then dubbed his photo "21st Century Bliss." Using Google Maps' Street View, Internet users can revisit the exact site of the photo themselves by simply entering the following coordinates: 38.248966, -122.410269.
View Larger Map Unfortunately, users may soon have to bid farewell to this iconic desktop wallpaper as Microsoft is set to retire the decade-old operating system in the next three years. During its heyday in the late 2000's, Windows XP cornered as much as 76 percent of the operating systems market, but has gradually declined to about 39 percent in July, the same level as that of Windows 7. — TJD, GMA News