The hill in question was located in Sonoma County, California. Indeed, it still is. According to Instagram account Inside History, the Windows XP wallpaper image was taken in 1996 by photographer ...

The photo you see above -- the default wallpaper for Windows XP -- is probably the most recognizable image in the world. What you probably didn't know is that it's a real photo, called Bliss ...

The picture known as "Bliss" soon became one of the most viewed photographs in the world when it was set as the default desktop background in Windows XP. O'Rear took the photo on film with a ...

Who hasn’t been lost in reverie staring at the default Windows XP wallpaper, dreaming of Middle Earth or maybe a weekend in Cork County? Yet that shot of a bucolic paradise has turned into a ...

Windows XP shipped with a version measuring just 800 by 600 pixels. Anywho, Inside History has a series of follow up images taken from the same vantage point in 2006, 2020, 2024 and 2025.