Man who took 'most viewed photo ever' reveals it was totally spontaneous
The man behind the world's 'most viewed photo ever' has opened up about how he got the famous shot and it was at least partly down to luck.
In an interview with People, photographer Chuck O'Rear explained that he always carries a camera with him because 'you just never know.'
One day in early 1996, O'Rear was driving from St Helena, California to Marin County to visit his now-wife Daphne Larkin when he pulled over to take a picture.
He told the publication: "I used to pull over often to take photos. I think the scenery there was so beautiful."
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The picture he took on that January day is called 'Bliss,' and it's better known as the background image of a Microsoft computer screen.
Featuring luscious, green, rolling hills and a bright blue sky dotted with perfect, fluffy, white clouds, the vibrant photograph looks like it must have been photoshopped.
But that wasn't the case. "When it's on film, what you see is what you get," O'Rear explained - the photographer taking the image using a Mamiya RZ67 camera with colour Fuji Film and a tripod.
"There was nothing unusual. I used a film that had more brilliant colours, the Fuji Film at that time, and the lenses of the RZ67 were just remarkable.
"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 in a video for Microsoft.
Two years later, O'Rears' image ended up in the lap of Microsoft's Bill Gates, after Gates' Corbis group bought Westlight stock photo agency.
Microsoft bought the photograph for a sum of $100,000 and the rest is history.
And, while the photographer spent more than two decades working for National Geographic, 'Bliss' remains his most famous image.
O'Rear explains: "I get emails maybe every week or two, something related to the 'Bliss' photograph.
"When I die, although I won't be buried, Daphne has said, on your tombstone, we're not going to say National Geographic, we're going to say 'Photographer of Bliss.'
"The image is everywhere as we all know. The picture, no matter where we've been in the world - India, Thailand, Greece - that picture is always there, either on some old computer in an upscale hotel that hasn't been updated in 30 years in the lobby the people are checking you in on, or, we saw that picture in billboards, airplanes, at airports," O'Rear reflects.
He resolves: "I have a theory that anybody now from aged 15 on for the rest of their life will remember this photograph."