When Charles O’Rear pulled to the side of California Highway 121 to capture a perfect landscape on the way to see his girlfriend in San Francisco, he couldn’t have imagined the impact his photograph would have. That simple picture of the hills of Napa Valley became the desktop background for Microsoft Windows XP, seen by well over 1 billion people worldwide and considered the most viewed photograph in history.
In this fascinating interview, released on the day Microsoft ended their support of the legendary operating system, O’Rear tells the story of how he took the iconic photo in January 1996, sold it to Microsoft in 2002, and settles speculation over whether or not the image was edited…
(via PetaPixel)
Previously… Windows XP desktop image compared to the same landscape on Google Maps