Man who took the “most viewed photo in history” reveals deep regret

Chuck O’Rear, the photographer responsible for taking the ‘most viewed photo in history,’ revealed his great regret about the shot.

He took the photo while traveling from his home in St. Helena, California, to meet Daphne Larkin, the woman who would become his wife, in Marin County in January 1996.

While on his way to his beloved’s home, O’Rear noticed that he “frequently stopped to take pictures” because the landscape along the way was “so beautiful.”

This particular image, titled Bliss, showed a panoramic view of rolling green hills flowing toward each other, accompanied by a beautiful blue sky and fluffy white clouds.

O’Rear’s shot eventually became the iconic background used by Microsoft in Windows XP. The company acquired the rights to the image after the Corbis group, owned by Bill Gates, bought the photography agency Westlight in 1998.

This was the agency to which O’Rear had originally submitted the photo as stock imagery. And this is where his regret comes in.

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Although the exact amount is unknown, O’Rear’s “Bliss” shot was purchased by Microsoft for a “six-figure sum” of over $100,000. However, O’Rear admitted he wished he had been better at negotiating.

“If I had known how popular it would become and how many computers it would be on, I should have negotiated a better deal and said, ‘Just give me a fraction of a cent every time it’s seen,’ and that would have been a good deal,” he said.

“It wasn’t a royalty-type situation. It was a plan: ‘Here’s what we’re paying you, thanks, we’ll put it on the screen [of the computer] and get moving.'”

He also took the opportunity to address the Photoshop accusations the shot has received. “When it’s on film, what you see is what you get. There was nothing unusual. I used film with brighter colors, the Fuji Film at that time, and the RZ67 lenses were just extraordinary.”

Photo and video: ChatGPT-4 / YouTube @Shoottherabbit. This content was created with the help of AI and reviewed by the editorial team.