The Shocking Truth Behind the World’s Most Viewed Photo—And What the Photographer Really Earned

Ever stopped to wonder which photo has probably been seen more times than all the cat videos on the internet combined? Well, it’s not exactly a viral meme or that epic selfie you took last summer—it’s a picture snapped by an unassuming guy named Chuck O’Rear on a sunny California day. This wasn’t some grand masterpiece he agonized over; no, for Chuck—now 83—it was just “another picture,” casually captured during a road trip to meet the woman who would become his wife. The kicker? Almost nobody who’s gazed at that iconic image—the rolling green hills and pristine blue sky famously known as ‘Bliss’—has any clue who took it. Yet, millions (if not billions) of computer users worldwide booted up their PCs to see Chuck’s photo greet them, waist-deep in nostalgia and Windows XP glory. It begs the question: can a casual snapshot really become the most viewed picture of all time? Let’s dive into the story behind that photograph—how an ordinary moment turned into a global icon and how one man’s habit of “just pulling over to take photos” changed the way we see our screens forever. LEARN MORE.

One sunny day in California, a man called Chuck O’Rear snapped a picture with his camera which has been viewed more times than anyone could ever count.

It’s been seen all over the world by all manner of people, and almost nobody who’s seen Chuck’s picture would have had any idea that he took it.

For the photographer, now aged 83, it was ‘just another picture’ which he ended up naming ‘Bliss’ and he explained that he would always carry a camera around with him ‘because you just never know’ when the moment for a photo will come up.

Chuck said he’d ‘pull over often to take photos’ of the beautiful California scenery, and on a journey in 1996 where the man was going to meet the woman who would become his wife, he decided to snap a particularly picturesque image.

‘Bliss’ by Chuck O’Rear (Microsoft Windows XP)

Yep, that one.

The image that greeted so many Windows users when they fired up the computer with the rolling fields of green meeting the bright blue sky and the seemingly perfect amount of clouds.

The picture looks, in some ways, too good to be true, but it very much is the real deal that Chuck captured with his camera.

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It’s no surprise this image is considered the ‘most viewed picture of all time’ due to how many computers were booted up and how many times this image was seen.

Chuck took the photo with a Mamiya RZ67 camera with colour Fuji Film and a tripod, and the photographer said that when you’re shooting on film ‘what you see is what you get’.

He noted that he ‘used a film that had more brilliant colours’ and the combination of that and the camera all rolled together to create the iconic image.

The landscape doesn’t even look like that any more, as vineyards have since been planted on the hills (By Simon Goldin – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1633984)

“The size of the camera and film together made the difference and I think helped the Bliss photograph stand out even more. I think if I had shot it with 35 millimetre, it would not have nearly the same effect,” he said.

Chuck made ‘Bliss’ available as a stock photo in 1998 and it was bought by Corbis, a company owned by Bill Gates.

In 2000, Microsoft bought the full rights to ‘Bliss’ so they could use it for Windows XP.

As for how much Chuck got paid for it, he can’t say the exact amount as he signed a confidentiality agreement not to give away, but the amount is said to be ‘in the low six figures’.

The photo was actually so expensive that when Microsoft bought it no company would deliver the film to them because it was so valuable.

In the end, they bought Chuck a plane ticket so he could personally make the journey and hand deliver the film containing the original image.