Using Google Maps' Street View, Internet users can revisit the exact site of the photo themselves by simply entering the following coordinates: 38.248966, -122.410269. Immoos then dubbed his photo "21st Century Bliss." "My first attempt to capture bliss in March was stymied by boring gray skies which left me shooting other things with better skies," Immoos wrote on his Flickr page.īy May, Immoos, who told GMA News Online that he lived near the site, walked back to the location, parked his car at a nearby house and walked 160 meters to the spot to take the shot that closely resembles the 1996 photograph. Green at the time of the photograph," they explained.īy the time the image was purchased by Microsoft, the infestation had been well taken care of and grapes were once again planted on the hills, they added.īut a cursory search on the Web of the depicted area in the photo showed that once in a while, the lush green color of the hills and the bright blue hue of the sky would reunite and re-create the famous lansdscape, just like what photographer Tony Immoos captured in 2010. For a few years the hill was covered with grass. The entire vineyard had to be pulled out. But in the early 90’s a Phylloxera bug infested the grapes and made them unusable. "On this hill grapevines had been planted. "With property prices in Sonoma reaching $75,000 per acre for bare land, most hills were being developed into vineyards or homes," the two wrote. In the artists' official webpage, Goldbin and Senneby, who mounted the photo as part of an exhibit and called it "After Microsoft," narrated how the new conditions came to be.
"Not only were different weather than the original picture, now the ground was converted into a vineyard," he said. Van Wessel also posted an "after" photo of the scenery, taken by artists Simon Goldin and Jakob Senneby about 10 years after the first photo, showing a forlorn view of dark skies hovering over wilted rows of vines. View "Before and After: The Windows XP Wallpaper" on Storify
"The photo was not taken in Ireland, but in Napa Valley, California, USA, near the residence of O'Rear, who, as you know by now, is indeed born American," van Wessel wrote in Dutch.