This is exactly what happened and the photographer travelled to Seattle to hand-deliver the content to Microsoft’s engineering team working on Windows XP. Microsoft asked O’Rear to sign a confidentiality agreement to prevent him from disclosing how much money he received for the photo, but it’s believed this was the second-largest payment ever made to a photographer for a single image.įedEx itself refused to ship the photo without a hefty insurance cost (some say that the typical insurance wasn’t enough to cover the value of the shipment), so in the end, it all turned out to be more affordable for Microsoft to actually buy a plane ticket and have everything delivered in person by O’Rear himself. Although no specifics were provided, it’s believed the price was somewhere in the low six figures, so shipping the photo and the slide required a very expensive insurance. This proved to be more complicated that it seemed to be given how much Microsoft paid for the photo.
The software giant purchased not only the rights to use the photo as the desktop background in Windows XP, but also the slide it was originally captured on, so Microsoft requested the photographer to deliver the film as well. Microsoft employees started looking for photos and eventually decided to stick with Bliss, though getting their hands on the actual image was a more complex process than initially thought. The shipping adventureĬhoosing the new Windows XP background, however, wasn’t an easy thing to do. The photo itself was uploaded to Corbis, a digital image service (more like stock photo websites) that Bill Gates himself founded, and was picked by Microsoft in 2000 as the default wallpaper for Windows XP. The photo in question was a medium format film negative that O’Rear shot with a Mamiya RZ67 on a tripod and Fujifilm Velvia film.
In the Registry Editor window, navigate to the following path from the left sidebar.The Windows XP wallpaper, known to everyone as Bliss, is without a doubt the most famous desktop background that ever got to see daylight, and this is mostly the result of how successful the operating system turned out to be.Īnd while many people know how the wallpaper eventually became so popular, the untold story of Bliss includes a plethora of captivating details proving that choosing a new desktop wallpaper for the world’s number one PC operating system isn’t just happening overnight.īliss is the creation of photographer Charles “Chuck” O’Rear, who took the picture in 1996 when he was driving down Highway 121 in the Napa Valley wine region. Press the Win + R keys to open the Run dialog box, and then type regedit in the box and hit Enter.
In addition to the above 2 methods, you can find the current Windows 10 wallpaper location via Registry Editor. Find Current Windows 10 Wallpaper Location via Registry Editor
After a moment, the themes files or folder will be shown in the subdirectory and you can open the folders to find your desired themes. Type the %localappdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Themes text in the search bar and hit Enter. Press the Win + E keys to open the File Explorer window.
To find the Windows 10 themes location, please the steps below: The themes that you downloaded are located in the local user directory if you haven’t changed it. These themes include your favorite game, outdoor views, etc. Microsoft often releases the Windows 10 theme pictures via the Microsoft Store. Then you can find the Windows background picture location in the Themes folder. Some Windows 10 users want to use the Windows 10 Themes instead of the standard background pictures. Find Windows 10 Wallpaper Location in Your Themes Folder