Man tried to recreate 'most viewed photo ever' and was shocked to find something very different on location
Have you ever gone back to the location of one of your fondest memories, only to barely recognize it?
Well, imagine that let-down magnified by quite a big margin and you'll get a sense of the disappointment that YouTuber Andrew Levitt felt on a filming trip.
Levitt was on the hunt for the exact hilltop that provided one of the most famous photographs of all time - the default background for Windows XP, called 'Bliss'.
That flowing green hill full of grass against a lovely blue sky with wisps of wandering cloud has been seen by millions of people and is famous for being one of the most-viewed images in human history.
It was taken by Chuck O'Rear the old-fashioned way - on film. With a lovely coincidence of timing he captured a near-perfect image, so it's no wonder Microsoft wanted to buy it.
Advert
All you have to do is look at it and, if you're from one of the generations who used Windows XP, you can probably imagine half the shortcuts on your desktop, whether that means MSN Messenger, an early version of Steam, or anything else.
The hill itself is in Sonoma, a wine-producing part of California, and Levitt discovered that local produce has had a major impact on the location.
Instead of finding that same beautiful green hilltop, Levitt found that the hill had been turned into a vineyard, so was instead full of rows of vines. That said, they're still surrounded by quite lovely yellow flowers, so it's not exactly a terrible view, just a very different one.
Still, Levitt wasn't happy to just stop and give up - a few months after releasing his first video, he uploaded another with the same title.
This hasn't gone quite as viral, but sees Levitt and his team going to a new location, in Oregon, called the Palouse. These flowing grasslands might not be technically where the wallpaper was shot, but they look incredibly similar.
After cruising around the area looking for similar hills, Levitt was able to find one that fit the bill perfectly and snapped a few shots that are indeed strikingly similar, barring the tiniest of details.
This just goes to show that, even if it seems like things have changed irretrievably, you can always go out of your way to find a new way to fulfil your ambitions.