苏堤春晓

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Windows默认壁纸Bliss的前世今生

(2014-08-02 19:53:33) 下一个


















众所周知,Windows XP默认的桌面是Bliss,而鲜为人知的是Bliss其实是一段爱情故事的副产品。

那是1996年一个平常的周五下午,摄影师查尔斯·奥利尔(Charles O’Rear)开车穿越美国加州的葡萄酒之乡去见当时的女朋友达芙妮。奥利尔称之后他与女友结了婚,而他拍摄的Bliss变成世界上最具标志性的图片,被选作微软操作系统的默认壁纸。

“那是一年冬至,外面下过大雨,草地愈发的翠绿。我开着车驶过这片美丽的蜿蜒小道去见达芙妮,暴风雨刚过,天空飘着白云,我觉得是时候出来拍几张照片了。”奥利尔说道。

他拿出玛米亚RZ67中画幅相机并拍摄下Bliss,这并非他首次试图捕捉高山的美丽。

“这片区域因连绵起伏的丘陵而闻名,我拍摄了很多次,然而产生的颜色从未有64年柯达彩色胶片显示的这么好,颜色从未如此翠绿。”

然而,Bliss与20世纪90年代末的样子大不相同。 无论人们怎么猜测,当奥利尔将Bliss交给美国高品(Corbis)有限公司时,这张原始图片未经过任何改动和编辑, Corbis是由比尔盖茨于1989年创立的照片交易和图片授权服务的公司。

当时高品公司可能只有50名记录的摄影师,而现在它的数据库里已经有1亿多张图片了。

Bliss被微软购买,具体金额仍是未知。由于保密协议奥利尔无法透露具体价格,但这是购买单张图片所付出的最大金额之一。

微软是如何发现这张照片的,奥利尔无从得知,也许是通过关键词或短语搜索,例如“连绵起伏的丘陵”?

“在Windows XP出来的几年后,有一天我收到了来自微软一名工程师的邮件。信件里写道,‘我们非常好奇这张照片是在哪里拍摄的?我们工程部门的很多人认为这是利用Photopshop后期合成的,有的人甚至认为这张照片是在华盛顿微软总部附近拍摄的。’” 奥利尔描述道。“很可惜你们都错了,这张照片是真实的,是我在居住的地方附近拍摄的,所见即所得,照片没有经过任何处理和加工。”

微软只是将这张照片裁剪成适合桌面配置的大小。

出于娱乐,奥利尔借助他拍摄的其他照片的元素利用Photoshop再造了Bliss。和图片不一样,操作系统具有有效期,微软将于4月8日终结对Windows XP的支持、软件更新和安全补丁。因此,Bliss的未来在哪里?这张照片是否会与OS联姻?

“我认为这张照片将成为永恒的传说,当你90岁的时候,一张类似Bliss的图片出现时你将会说,噢我记得它,它是我们当时使用的电脑桌面。

现在你拿着这张照片给全世界任何地方的路人看,他们肯定会说我在哪里见过这一景象。”虽然具体有多少人见过Bliss仍不清楚,但奥利尔估计至少有10亿人。

Windows XP的普及意味着奥利尔的作品广为流传。 虽然Bliss是张如此标志性和广为人知的图片,但不是每个人都像奥利尔一样过度关注这张图片。

“几年前我登上了澳大利亚昆士兰的一艘渡船,船上所有显示屏的背景都是Bliss,我对渡船公司的一名女性员工说,那张照片是我拍的,她回答说那又怎样?”

虽然奥利尔在摄影生涯中使用过大量胶片照相机,但他却是数字摄影的狂热支持者。现在他只随身携带一部照相机——松下Lumix LX3,这部配有28毫米镜头的照相机并不是最新款,却很适合奥利尔。

当被问及现代高端数字照相机是否可能再造Bliss的外观和感觉时,奥利尔认为它“可能青出于蓝而胜于蓝”。“我认为镜头才是现在的挑战,它们是照相机最弱的部分,你可以拥有100兆16比特的图片,即使你的镜头不符合标准也不要紧,你也能产生10兆的文件。”

奥利尔曾为美国国家地理拍摄过图片,也担任洛杉矶时报的摄影师,现在他主要花时间在拍摄全球各地制造葡萄酒的过程,图片主要用于书籍和他的个人网站等。

据他的妻子达芙妮表示,奥利尔是同时代为数不多从胶片摄影转移到数字摄影的摄影师之一,在经历了8年的数字摄影后,他似乎并没有重回胶片摄影的打算。

“纯粹的摄影已成历史,当我们看国家地理等杂志时,它们的封面不再使用纯粹的照片来吸引读者。取而代之的是插图,它们可以随意被操纵,完全取决于读者想要的是什么。当你能够在平板电脑、手机或者电脑上阅读,并获得声音、视觉甚至更好的色彩时,谁还会想要翻开杂志书看?”对于那些怀旧的人来说,他们可能还会将Bliss设为电子设备的桌面背景。

至于微软未来的桌面背景是否会采纳奥利尔拍摄的其他照片,奥利尔仍抱有希望。“我给他们留了我的电话号码,可惜现在还没有任何人打过来索要照片。” 奥利尔说道。






It's Bliss: behind the iconic Windows XP photo

It's because of her that we've got the photograph.

Although it will forever be associated with Windows XP, Bliss was actually the by-product of a love story. It was a regular Friday afternoon in 1996 when photographer Charles O'Rear took the drive through California's wine country to see his then-girlfriend Daphne.

Chuck, as he introduces himself in conversation, has since married Daphne. Bliss, meanwhile, has gone on to become one of the world's most iconic photographs, chosen as the default wallpaper of Microsoft's operating system.
 
"There's a time of the year in our mid-winter, in January, when we've had rains. The grass is now getting a brilliant green. The storms are still coming through with rain and clouds. While I'm driving this beautiful, winding road to see Daphne, my God, the storm has just gone through, there are some white clouds, boy, I think I'll just get out and make a couple of frames," he says.

Chuck pulled out his medium format Mamiya RZ67 film camera and made Bliss. It wasn't the first time he had attempted to capture the beauty of the hills, though.

"That particular spot, or this area of the wine region, is known for that same thing — the rolling hills. I have been photographing them for a long time, with film. And yet colours never quite came out the same on Kodachrome 64, the best film you could possibly have. They were never quite green enough."

Despite what many people might think, the original frame of Bliss was completely unaltered and unedited by Chuck when he submitted it to Corbis, the stock photo and image licensing service founded by Bill Gates in 1989.

Corbis — which means woven basket in Latin — had maybe 50 photographers on file when Chuck submitted Bliss. Today, there are over 100 million images in the database.

Bliss was purchased by Microsoft for an undisclosed sum. While Chuck can't reveal how much he was paid due to a non-disclosure agreement, it was one of the largest amounts ever paid for a single photograph. He still doesn't know how Microsoft found the photo, whether through keywords or by typing in phrases like "rolling green hills".

"Several years after [Windows XP] came out, an email came to me from one of the engineers, somebody within Microsoft. 'We're just curious about where that photograph was made'," read the email. Chuck continues: "'Most of us in the engineering department think that it was Photoshopped. Some of us think that it was taken not far from Microsoft headquarters in Washington'."

"Sorry guys, you're all wrong," he says. "It's the real deal, it's near where I live, and what you see is what you get. It has not been touched." Microsoft did, however, crop the imagefor the desktop configuration and pumped up the green of the rolling hill. 

Just for fun, Chuck has recreated Bliss entirely in Photoshop, made up of elements from his other photographs. You can see the recreated version here on his Photoshelter page.

Unlike images, operating systems have a use-by date. Microsoft will end support, software updates and security patches for Windows XP on 8 April. So what is the future for Bliss, the photo that remains inevitably tied to the OS?

"I think it's going to be around forever," he says. "When you are 90 years old, somewhere a photograph like Bliss will appear and you will say 'I remember that. When we had computers on our desk, that was on the screen'. Anywhere on this planet right now, if you stop somebody on the street and you show somebody that photograph, they're going to say 'I've seen that somewhere, I recognise that'."

Although there can never be a true indication of how many people have seen Bliss, Chuck estimates it is in the billions. The worldwide spread of Windows XP means that he has seen his own work in some far-flung places.

"The neatest place I have seen was recently, actually it was in the past couple of weeks. An American photographer was allowed to go into North Korea. One of [the photographer's images] was in some power plant, there's a big board where two men were sitting. What's on the screen? Bliss."

"Under the White House there's something called the situation room ... there were maybe 10 or 15 monitors and what was on the monitors? Bliss. I'm sure before they allowed the photographer to come in they had to clean all of the screens, make sure there was no stuff on there we couldn't share with the world."

With a photo as iconic and as well-known as Bliss, there are bound to be people who don't quite share the same exuberance for the image as Chuck does.

"A couple of years ago we got on a ferry out of Townsville [in Queensland, Australia]. There it is on all the monitors. To the woman who was working for the ferry company, I said 'that's my photograph!' and she said 'so what?'"

Despite using a myriad of film cameras during his photographic career, Chuck is now a fierce proponent of digital photography. He carries just one camera with him now — a Panasonic Lumix LX3. With a 28mm-equivalent lens "which I love", the LX3 is not a new camera by any means, but it does the job for him.

When asked if a modern day high-end digital camera could recreate the look and feel of Bliss, Chuck believes that it could "probably do an even better job" than a medium format film model.

"I think the lenses are now the challenge. [They] are now the weakest part of the camera. You can have a 100MB 16-bit image, yet if your lens is not up to par, it doesn't matter, you might as well have a 10MB file."

Chuck's previous photographic roles included stints at National Geographic and he was a staff photographer at the Los Angeles Times. Now, he spends his time photographing wine-producing regions across the globe for books, professional assignments and his website, wineviews.com.

According to his wife Daphne, Chuck was one of the last photographers of his generation to move over to digital. Now, he doesn't see himself going back after seven or eight years on the other side.

On assignment in the film days, Chuck says that every time a photographer made an exposure they had "no idea" whether or not they got the photo or not. "The first person to look at that was going to be an editor in Washington. Every shot's gotta count." Now, the photographer has the scope to edit, crop and present a finished image before it gets reviewed.

"In the early days of digital, the histogram was critical. You can't spill over in the black point because on the printed page it's going to get muddy. You've got to have some information on the white side so that when it's on the press that won't become a blank." Now, he says that watching your histogram and being that precise doesn't matter all that much anymore, "because the printed page is going away."

"Pure photography is almost history. When we look at National Geographic, Time ... they're no longer using a pure photograph on the cover to sell the magazine. It's illustrations. It's photographs that are manipulated. They have decided that that's what the reader wants."

"Who wants to open a magazine when you can look at your tablet, phone or computer and get sound and visuals and better colours?"

Maybe for nostalgia's sake, those users will have Bliss as their device's desktop background. Closer to home, Daphne still has the wallpaper gracing the desktop of her home computer.

As for any future Microsoft wallpapers being captured by Chuck's camera, he remains hopeful. "I sent them my phone number but nobody's called yet for another photograph!"







 

 











 


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