A short story from the author of the most popular photo in the world

“Ideal” green hills and blue sky ... Of course, this is a standard background image of the Windows XP desktop. Recently, Microsoft has ceased official support for this operating system. In this connection, the company posted on its Youtube channel an interview with the author of this photo, which is known to most of us under the name “Serenity”.


A photographer whose work has been seen billions of times is called Charles O'Rier. The picture was taken in California, a little north of San Francisco back in 1996, a few years before the release of Windows XP itself. Charles claims that the image was not digitally processed. But it’s worth saying that the photos of the same place years later look completely different, but by the way, each of you will be able to see the famous valley with the help ofGoogle Maps , specifying the coordinates 38.248966, -122.410269.

Thank you all for your attention.

UPD : added link