Charles O'Rear

Charles O'Rear (born 1941) is an American stock photographer for Getty Images and formerly Corbis until its acquisition in 2016. He is best known for taking Windows XP's default wallpaper Bliss, which has become one of the most viewed images in the world as a result of XP's success. As the image was not licensed but rather acquired, he received a great sum of money for it. He also took Red moon desert, also included in XP, which served as the default wallpaper in some Beta 2 builds, along with Highway Winding Through Countryside, which was used in an MSN Explorer 7 demo. His photography generally focuses on subjects such as wine, landscapes and technology.

Outside of his stock photography, he is notable for his work with National Geographic, where he was sent on assigments to photograph and document various subjects. In 1980 he co-founded stock photo agency Westlight with Craig Aurness (who took the XP Beta sample picture Surfer). The company would be bought by Bill Gates' Corbis in 1998, one of the stock photo agencies Microsoft frequently licensed from, which itself was acquired by Unity Glory/Visual China Group in 2016.