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Then, Microsoft came calling. Microsoft’s art director was searching for "Pastoral landscapes without people." They found O’Rear’s hill. They wanted exclusivity—meaning no other company, ad agency, or calendar printer could ever use that hill again.

"Not at all," he says. "That photograph paid for my house." original windows xp wallpaper

The design team, led by Microsoft’s Creative Director, decided to ditch digital abstraction for analog reality. They hired a legendary nature photographer named . Then, Microsoft came calling

Charles O’Rear is 83 now. He still lives in Napa. He still shoots film. He laughs when people ask him if he’s sick of looking at the hill. "Not at all," he says

Close your eyes for a second. Picture the year 2002. You’re walking into a Circuit City or a CompUSA. The air smells like fresh inkjet paper and hot plastic. In front of you, stacked in rainbow-colored boxes, are the CDs for Windows XP.

It became the single most viewed photograph in history, estimated to have been seen by over a billion people .