Bliss (image)

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Bliss seen in a typical Windows XP desktop.

Bliss is the name of a JPEG image produced from a photograph of a landscape in Napa County, California, California, east of Sonoma Valley. It is so named because it contains rolling green hills and a blue sky with stratocumulus and cirrus clouds. The image is used as the default computer wallpaper for the "Luna" theme, which is included with Microsoft Windows XP.

The photograph was taken by professional photographer Charles O'Rear, a resident of St. Helena in Napa County, for digital-design company HighTurn from Bellevue outside Seattle, who have also taken photographs for Bill Gates's private Seattle stock photography company Corbis. O'Rear also took photographs of Napa Valley in 1978 for the May 1979 National Geographic Magazine article Napa, Valley of the Vine.

O'Rear's photograph inspired Windows XP's US$200 million advertising campaign Yes you can., by the San Francisco division of New York City advertising company McCann-Erickson. The campaign was launched on TV on ABC during one of ABC Sports's Monday Night Football games of the 2001 NFL season. The TV commercials included Madonna's Ray of Light song, whose TV rights cost Microsoft about $14 million.

The image is also available as one of the many image options on CapitalOne credit cards, and has been subject to many parodies.

Bliss (image)

See also