Man who tried to recreate 'most viewed photo ever' was shocked to find something very different on location

When it comes to ‘the most famous picture ever’ I bet a few come to mind. Do you think of The Beatles crossing Abbey Road? The black and white one that everyone’s mum had in the living room of workers eating their lunch on a sky scrapper?

There’s quite a choice there. But the ‘most viewed’ almost seems to be overlooked as it’s still so often used, it’s not classed as ‘historical’ and it’s still very much in the day-to-day.

Any guesses?

The Windows XP background is classed as the most viewed image in the world.

As soon as you read it, the image comes to mind doesn’t it? The green hills and the blue sky, with your MSN log in ready to go (rise up, now-ancient nineties kids.) It’s an image that everybody has seen before.

youtube/andrewlevitt

You'd think the title of the most viewed image would suggest professional lighting, the perfect angle and multiple test shots, right? Wrong. Chuck O Rear, the now 81-year-old who took the picture, said he was just ‘in the right place at the right time.’

In a 2021 interview with People, Chuck said: “I take a camera wherever I go just in case I see something," he explained.

Did you know the image actually has a name? And no, it’s not just called ‘Windows XP screen’ (news to me), Chuck said that once he looked back at the picture and ‘it was just so beautiful, it was bliss’ – so that’s what he called it. ‘Bliss'.

"When it's on film, what you see is what you get," O'Rear explains - the photographer having taken the image using a Mamiya RZ67 camera with colour Fuji Film and a tripod.

"I have a theory that everyone over the age of 15 has seen this image, they know this image for life," Chuck said in regards to his legacy.

Although the picture was taken almost by chance by the photographer, YouTuber Andrew Levitt who’s channel replicates iconic images was determined to snap the same view and replicate the photo.

When Andrew and his team tried to travel to the place where the picture was taken, although they didn’t realise that it was one of the most ‘dangerous roads in the area’, despite the picture looking so serene.

As well as the location, the place was now unrecognisable.

Youtube/andrewlevitt

“Our biggest issue isn't even that there’s no green grass or blue skies, it’s the fact that the hills have turned into Vineyards, so it’ll look nothing like the original,” the Youtuber explained to camera.

"There’s no way to capture an identical picture, but we’re still going to take one for comparison,” they decided.

The content creators kept it light-hearted, laughing while setting up the tripod: "This is hilarious. It looks nothing like it. I wouldn’t use this as a wallpaper."

The team went on to explain that due to the Vineyard, it wasn’t possible to emulate the picture at all. Meaning that the infamous image now only exists on screen, sadly.